The Black Sheep
by A.A. Pessimal
Summary: Howondalandian Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes is happy in her job, her profession and her life. What could possibly upset her day? But every family had its black sheep...
1. Chapter 1

_**The Black Sheep**_

_**A Discworld short. **_

The adventurer walked through the gloomy streets of Ankh-Morpork. It was winter, and the city was in its usual default state of cold dripping rain. Under his troll-hide jacket, which he claimed he'd taken from its previous owner after several hours of life-or-death single combat**(1)**, he felt a steady rivulet dribbling down his back. That was the problem with these clothes. They fit the image, they drew the crowds, they helped fill the hat, they suggested a persona.

They had, however, been designed for something other than an Ankh-Morpork winter. Half a world away from Ankh-Morpork, in fact. His feet squelched in something nameless on the pavement. He winced. His credit at the Gamblers' Guild had run out. The old trade in escorting soft city people on safe adventuring had dried up. There was less and less wilderness in the Central Continent these days to warrant a paying guide. And people were beginning to say _There ain't no such thing as a Balgrog, mister! _Bloody cynics. Just because _he'd_ never seen one either didn't mean to say they didn't exist! And the Mended Drum, in better times the local for him and people like him, didn't want to know. The new management had thrown him out for panhandling after his beer-buying money had run out. And nobody from the old set had been in. Nobody. It was like a ghost town.

He felt cold, tired, wet and hungry. The only bit of kindness had been some hours ago, when Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, recognising a fellow entrepreneur down on his luck, had advanced him a sausage-inna-bun for free. Well, not _free_ so much as _on credit. _Pay me when you're on your feet again, Balthazaar.

The adventurer reckoned he was in for another spot of luck. Sometime around now. Or else it'd be a spike at the Omnian mission tonight. He shuddered. Two hours of thickly laid on sermon. A bowl of very thin soup and an anaemic-looking bread roll. And a mattress that might last have been dosed on by Foul Ol' Ron.

_Ye gods, this had better work! _He prayed, fervently, turning up Filigree Street.

* * *

Johanna Smith-Rhodes and a group of pupils returned from a water survival lesson at Mort Lake. The Guild viewed the City's reservoir of relatively clean water**(2)** as a gift for tuition in how to swim, handle boats of various kinds, and survive capsizing, shipwreck and the sort of little irritations a client might seek to install so as to deter a seaborne approach from their dedicated personal Assassin.

Still not fully habituated to the rigours of an Ankh-Morpork winter, Johanna had kept the lesson to the basics of managing and steering canoes, together with the inevitable demonstration of how to rescue somebody who had fallen in, followed shortly by a teach-in on dealing with how to resuscitate, and then how to revive an exposure case. (Matron Igorina, who made a point of accompanying Johanna's outdoor classes since there was invariably an interesting injury or two, had been on hand to oversee taking the casualty back to the Guild for further treatment).

She had avoided falling in herself, but still felt cold and wet around the edges and was looking forward to a hot bath and a change of clothes. She thanked the lesson plan that this had been the last formal lesson of her day – designed to take place in the late afternoon to capitalise on the last of the daylight and allow ample time for pupils to return, take a hot drink, and get ready for their early evening classes - and quickly supervised stowing away the canoes, paddles and lifejackets into the Guild's boatsheds, a place no sane Thief would ever dream of attempting to rob. Then the Guild omnibus turned up to carry them back across the river to the Guild, a teacher, a teaching assistant, and twenty-eight cold but attentive students.

Johanna wondered why the porter, Mr Maroon, had an odd expression on his face, and why the two senior students who had been assigned gate duty for an hour were looking at her with thinly hidden smirks, as if she were the butt of a joke she hadn't realised had been told.

Maroon touched his cap.

"Er, miss? " he said, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

"How mey I help, Mr Meroon?" she said, politely.

"There's an…er, _gentleman_, here. He claims to be a relative of yours."

One of the gate Assassins sniggered, uncontrollably. Under her glare, it turned into a coughing fit. She sighed. She did have family in Ankh-Morpork, it was true: the Howondalandian Ambassador was her uncle. There was his wife, Aunt Frijda. Sometimes a cousin from Home had passed through, a son or daughter of the ambassador, sometimes a Smith-Rhodes from the socially upmarket and exceedingly prestigious end of the family. (Johanna had no illusions about herself: from the branch of the nearly-royal colonial family that had chosen to marry into the Boors, over time her family had become _rooinecker_ Boor farmers living on the frontier.) But from the way Maroon was acting, it was not one of those slightly supercilious relatives who always made her fists itch. She felt a nasty suspicion.

"Cless, you ere dismissed!" she said to her pupils. "I'm _sure_ you ell hev other lessons to ettend? Or perhaps homework to prepare?"

The students took the very large hint, in the main, and shuffled off. Although they were keen to know exactly what had rattled Miss Smith-Rhodes, they were also wet and cold and uncomfortable, and the more thoughtful ones had no wish to add further discomfort to their immediate burden. One or two, however, who sensed mirth and gossip, needed a more intense disapproving glare before they got the hint and moved on.

Johana scowled, and wrapped her cloak about her.

"Where is this relative of mine, Mr Meroon?" she inquired.

"We sent him under guard to one of the consulting rooms, miss." said Maroon. "He's been politely advised not to stir from there until you turn up."

"Good" she said. The consulting rooms were a discreet suite where contractees could wait, in order to discuss details of little surprises they wished to have facilitated for clients of the Guild. Another horrible thought struck Johanna.

"He doesn't want me to discuss a contrect with him, does he?"

"Can't say, miss." Maroon said, diplomatically. "But between you and me, he looked like he could barely scrape together the ffee for Corporal Nobbs."

The contract on Corporal Nobbs of the City Watch stood at fifty pence. It was only allowed to remain on file because it was a standing joke among Assassins.

She nodded.

"Lead me on, Mr Meroon!"

"Johanna! _Poupette_!" he exclaimed, rising from the couch where he had been taking his ease and flinging his arms wide.

"He was like that all the way up, miss." said Maroon. "Talking about what a lovely child you were and how the family's pet name for you when you were little was "puppet"."

"IzzzatSO…" she breathed. No wonder the senior students on gate guard had been smirking. She hoped he had not brought out any family iconographs.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the Assassin guarding the door was barely restraining his shoulders quaking with mirth.

"Johanna! _Doll!_ Don't you recognise your old uncle?"

"I'll take it from here, Mr Meroon. Thenk you _both_ so much!" she said, with a meaningful glare at the door guard.

He was Howondalandian, like her. He was dressed in Howondalandian bush uniform, like her. But it was battered, threadbare and much repaired. He wore a non-politically correct trollskin jerkin. Any troll seeing that on a human in this city was not going to be a happy troll. A whip, a crossbow, and a quiver of arrows were stacked on the floor next to a field pack that she recognised as Howondalandian Army surplus. A machete, much chipped and slightly rusted, completed the outfit.

It was a shame it was on a body like Uncle Balthazar, skinny, hunched and slightly beer-bellied, a man who had perhaps had one outdoor adventure too many.

"My! Hesn't my little girl grown up!" he exclaimed.

His little girl swore virulently in _Vondalaans_. He affected to look shocked.

"Now whet would your poor mother, my brother's dear wife, think if she heard that?"

Johanna stomped furiously to the window and looked out. Yes, a few students were loitering within listening distance. She allowed her lips to purse to the point of invisibility. They got the message, and moved on.

"Whet do you _went_, Uncle Balthazar?"

"Well" he said, "I wes rather hoping my niece, the successful and well-rewerded Essessin, might see her way clear, out of the essential kindness of her heart, to caring for her dear uncle in the time of his need…"

He faltered, seeing the expression on her face.

"Five hundred dollars?" he asked, hopefully.

"You're still grifting, eren't you? The Belgrog scem?" she demanded. He nodded.

Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter**(3)** (formerly Howondaland Smith-Rhodes, until the family got to hear about it and strongly suggested he change his name) stood, shameless and expectant. His niece shook her head, disapprovingly.

"I don't know, Uncle. You're not getting any younger end most people know there's no such thing es a Belgrog. End for goodness' sake, lose thet jacket! _Trolls _live in this city! If they see you, you are dead!"

"So you are concerned for my welfare, puppet?"

"Look, I'll buy you a new jecket! I'll even _borrow_ one you can wear out, so thet no troll sees you in thet! The Wetch would call it suicide, you know?"

"Johanna, your kindness does you credit! End the five hundred dollars?"

She sighed, knowing she was being manipulated by a master.

"I'll draw on my Guild eccount." she said, reluctantly, knowing she'd never see the money again. "But on two conditions. One, no more scemming people end leading them to think you are raising expedition funds to go out hunting the evil Belgrog. When ell the time you are taking it easy in Brindisi or Genua until the money runs out. You understand? And you ere well over fifty now. Most of the other edventurers end heroes, the real ones, heve died or retired. Good grief, Herena The Henna-Haired Harridan is now Gerontia the Grey-Haired Hag! End you should see the erthritis she hes from not wearing very much in all weathers! _Get a new job, uncle!"_

Her uncle nodded mute agreement on both points. Johanna sighed, knowing the money was lost, together with whatever sturdy raincoat she was able to obtain for him. She also suspected he'd never get a safe day job. But this was _family. _

He thanked her most courteously for both gifts.

"Johanna, is there anywhere around here a fellow cen get a square meal?" he asked.

She took a deep breath. She counted to ten, once in Morporkian and a second time in Vondalaans.

"You're family. I suppose I could get you into High Dinner as a guest. But do you not _dare_ emberress me!"

And that was it. Until the morning later in the week when, with her embarrassing uncle long gone, Johanna received a courteous letter from the Gamblers' Guild noting that they now understood she, Johanna Smith-Rhodes, had assumed responsibility for the financial affairs of her uncle, Mr Balthazar Smith-Rhodes, trading as Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter. In that case, could they ring the little matter of two thousand seven hundred dollars in gambling debts to her attention and trust payment would be prompt?

Johanna swore for quite some time. It was an education to listening students.

* * *

**(1) He'd actually won it in a down-and-dirty game of Cripple Mr Onion. **

2 **(2) Compared, for instance, to the Ankh**

3 **(3) **He has cameo roles in Terry Pratchett's _**Moving Pictures**_ and _**Guards! Guards!**_


	2. The Gods love a gracious giver

_**The Black Sheep 2: A Debt of Honour (You asked for it. I went away and thought about it. Here it is: chapter two. Enjoy.)**_

Johanna had gathered herself together after receiving the courtesy note from the Guild of Gamblers. She weighed up her options. It was known the Gamblers now had their own enforcers, the Dealers and Croupiers, one of whose jobs was to go to a client known to be in financial difficulties and to remind them that a gambling debt was a debt of honour, and they were _sure_ no gentleman, such as your good self, sir, would do anything _other_ than seek to make good the liability in which he found himself with the Guild? Indeed, persistent evaders or shirkers of such honour debts were now classed as, at the very least, _attempted suicides_ by the over-worked City Watch.

While she was sure it would solve her problems, and she was not so naïve as to think her uncle Balthazar would never come back looking for more once the first hand-out was spent, she winced. At bottom, she was fond of him, a man who, unusually, laughed and joked a lot, a rarity in a dour Boor people renowned for their sense of humour. And that was where the problem was. He knew what buttons to press.

She could body-guard him and keep him safe. Not even the D&C would molest a man with Assassin protection. _No, Johanna. Too much time wasted. You have so many other commitments. And besides, the Gamblers would complain to Downey, a man who likes to unwind in the casino over baccarat and the roulette wheel. Ag, do I want to be the woman who got the entire Guild barred from gambling in this city? _

And then there were the occasional visitors to the city from the socially upscale end of her family. She knew the well-heeled and better-connected Smith-Rhodes' already sneered at the Boor end of the family, hers. Just let one of them get wind that a Boor Smith-Rhodes had defaulted on gambling debts in the big city…

_Noblesse oblige. _

Even though she could have cheerfully inhumed her uncle that morning, she very reluctantly decided the only thing to do was to pay up with good grace. She was in a profession that, although it demanded much, paid well for good results. Various contracts had made her an independently wealthy young woman. An amount that fell a little bit shy of three thousand dollars would be a bite, but not a deep one.

She composed herself, her anger and resentment simmering under the surface, and went to take her first lesson. Hopefully the word had already gone out that she was in a foul mood and woe betide any student who submitted inadequate homework or otherwise drew her attention.

* * *

In the early evening, Johanna called in briefly at the Guild cashiers, and concluded a transaction. She was aware of old Mr Wimvoe looking on her with sympathy and concern, and this did little to ease her irritation. The story of old Uncle Balthazar taking his niece for over three thousand must have got all around the Guild by now. She smiled, stowed the cash in an inside pocket, and left the Guild. Even if she had worn a placard saying "_Attention – I am carrying nearly three thousand dollars in cash!"_ she would have been safe from robbery. Thieves are not usually so desperate or so stupid, and they are generally intelligent enough to recognise trouble coming.

Trouble this evening was a five-foot-four red-haired Assassin called Johanna, who crossed the Broad Way at the Palace and headed off towards the Street of Alchemists, just _willing _the other sort of Thief to try and mug her. She felt like inhuming somebody just for the exercise. Alas, the psychic atmosphere she was projecting was provoking exactly the opposite effect, and she had an untroubled walk down to the Gamblers' Guild.

The casino floor was just opening up for the night's business, and assorted staff members looked up without undue curiosity as she entered. Assassins were not unknown in the casino, and were generally courteous and well-behaved and accepted losses with good grace. Johanna had been here a couple of times with colleagues, and had ventured a few token bets at the tables, but she had never really seen the point of gambling with mere money. (Although as an Assassin, she took pleasure in taking more calculated, measured, risks, which if she got them wrong could entail loss of life or limb. That sort of risk made her feel more _alive_).

She stopped a tuxedo'd and bowtied small-d dealer, the sort who only dealt the cards, and did not break fingers.

"Where do I find Scrote Jones?" she demanded.

"Mr Jones is very busy…aaaawk!"

Johanna lifted him by his lapels. She glared at him.

"He will not be too busy for me. Tell him Miss Smith-Rhodes is here. There is a debt to pay!"

She stood back as the lackey stumbled off to find the Guild president. Two of the Croupiers, the capital-c bouncers and enforcers, moved into view but stopped some distance away, aware they were dealing with an irritated Assassin. Two women, built like Constable Precious Jolson of the Watch, who in their sequinned gowns looked like exquisitely coutured lady wrestlers. _Which is probably what they were before Scrote signed them up_, she thought, as she nodded and smiled at them.

The original dealer hurried back.

"Mr Jones will see you now, miss. Please follow me!"

"Thenk you very much!" she said, smiling, as she was led upstairs to the Guild President's suite of rooms. The lackey knocked and admitted her. She walked in.

Scrote Jones, the Guild leader, was sitting at a card table, wearing his Gamblers' Guild green glass eyeshade of office. He was in his middle fifties, and radiated a raffish, somewhat seedy, aura of male sexuality that pronounced _I am mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Form an orderly queue, girls.__**(1)**_

And he wasn't alone: with him was the girl who'd forced her way to the head of the queue, and deftly ensured that not much more of a queue built up behind her. Johanna smiled: Scrote and his semi-permanent mistress were good for each other. They made a good non-couple together. And…

"Hi, Emmie!" she said, smiling. It was good to see a friend.

"Cherie!" Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Ēpées said, getting up from where she had been sitting very close to Scrote. "I won't ask what brings you here. I have a notion, I think."

Emmanuelle was a fellow Assassin and teacher at the Guild school, a lethal swordswoman who before her admission to the Guild had inhumed seven men and a troll for money. She now taught swordsmanship at the Guild and maintained both her taste for gambling and her membership of the Gamblers' Guild. Known as the Black Widow, she was a lethal weapon in her own right and something of a Guild legend.

Johanna nodded and brought out the letter from the Guild, handing it to Scrote. She allowed him a few seconds to assimilate its content and then proudly reached into her inside pocket. She noticed the slightest flicker of alarm in his eyes.

_He keeps a good poker face. But even he cannot guard his eyes in fear of what else I might have in my inside pocket to bring out. And Emmie, although my friend, has shifted stance slightly and her hand is poised, just so, to go for her sword. She wonders too. _

"Do not misunderstand me, Mister Jones." Johanna said, levelly. "I am here es requested, to settle my oncle's gembling debts."

She brought out a bundle of notes.

"Two thousand seven hundred, you said? Here are Guild bonds to the velue of two thousand five hundred. End two hundred in the new benknotes. If you prefer, I cen go to the Royal Benk tomorrow end withdraw the cesh in notes, but you will find Guild of Essessin bonds are honoured es herd currency."

"Well, I don't know what to say, Miss Smith-Rhodes." Scrote said breathing out. "You understand we had to send the letter out. And you are the gentleman's nearest relative in Ankh-Morpork. We could have sent it to the Ambassador…"

"Oncle Pieter is only the brother-in-law. End thet removed, es his sister is my mother. Oncle Balthazar is my father's brother". she said, stiffly. "From his perspective, there is a femily essociation, but a more distent one."

"And had you sent such a letter to the Howondalandian Ambassador, it may have provoked an international incident!" Emmanuelle said, drily. "Lord Vetinari would not have appreciated it, and I am sure he would have called you to the palace for a discreet word."

Scrote nodded.

"So there was only you." He said apologetically. "And to be honest, we weren't expecting you to pay. We have to explore every avenue, after all…"

She nodded.

"Once you brought it to my ettention, how could I _not_ pey?" she asked. "My femily hev a good name end a good reputation. How does it look if _one _of the Smith-Rhodes fails to honour a debt end runs from it? I em the _only_ family member who lives permenently in this city. So it must fall to me, so es to keep the good femily name. _Noblesse oblige, _Mister Jones_!"_

"But, _cherie_, one of the Smith-Rhodes has indeed Llamedosed**(2)** on a debt and has run away from it, expecting others to clear up in his wake." Enmmanuelle said. "As I understand your uncle has done for all his adult life."

"I cannot help my oncle being what he is." Johanna said. "I _can _help if it threatens to stain the rest of the femily end makes us look like…" she paused. An earlier, unreformed, Johanna might have used a term like "_white kaffirs_" at this point. Now, it stuck a long way short of her lips.

"But you know whet I mean" she said, sighing. "Mr Jones, my upmarket relatives use this cesino when they visit this city. If their credit is withdrawn because Oncle Balthazar abused it end thet heving the Smith-Rhodes name then makes them a credit risk, I can just hear them now telking ebout my family." She shuddered. "Elso, it reflects bedly on the embessador thet a relative, a more distent one but still a relative, hes run from his debts. I will not hev thet."

Scrote nodded, sympathetically. Johanna wondered just how many black sheep of the city's noble families had run up unpayable bills, sure in the knowledge that the family would pay up rather than risk a scandal. Jones, she was sure, had been here, in scenes like this, many times before.

"Will you tell the ambassador?" he asked, kindly.

"I should, I think, Not because I em esking for epplause, but because a trick my oncle may try is to go to our Consulates in other cities claiming to have been robbed, or otherwise a victim of bad fortune, so as to obtain a cesh edvence which he then squenders. Oncle Piet can circulate a warning. I should perheps tell my family Balthazar is up to his tricks egain. It mey distress them end my father will be engry, but they should know. End, Mister Jones. I should be obliged in future if the Gemblers' Guild does _not_ extend such a long credit line to my oncle. Are you hearing me? "

Emmanuelle frowned.

"Even so, _cherie,_ this man has taken over three thousand dollars from you, together with a full dinner at the Guild for which you had to pay, together with more suitable clothing that enabled him to put away that trollskin jerkin he wears. You should not have had to assume this burden. Myself, I would have steered him to Clay Lane or Quarry Street and put the word out about a human adventurer wearing trollskin. This, I think, would have ended the problem!"

"I couldn't hev done thet, Emmie. He's _femily_!"

She nodded, and put a sympathetic hand on her friend's shoulder.

"There may be another way, _cherie_. An Assassin's way!"

"I don't want to take out a contrect on him, Emmie. Elthough I _know_ you would be deadly!"

The Quirmian assassin smiled, a long thin smile from such a sensual mouth, that had little humour about it.

"Johanna, _ma petite mignonne_, who said anything about _killing_?"

While it is true that the whole time-honoured _raison d'être_ of the Guild of Assassins involves sending people to meet their Gods while they are still young and healthy and of able mind and able to enjoy the meeting more, inhumation is not the only job an Assassin can legitimately take on, in exchange for the usual incentive less 50% Guild tax.

Security consultancy, for instance: advising people on how to live untroubled lives, in efficiently protected houses, with coaches that are hard to hold up or hijack, with routes to and from that are hard to predict or interdict or launch assassination attempts from. Bodyguarding is a logical extension of security consultancy.

Sometimes an Assassin on a security consultancy or bodyguarding duties will come into direct opposition with a fellow Guild member who is contracted to bring about the exact opposite. In cases of a serious conflict of interests, the Guild has been known to decline a contract on a client who is being bodyguarded, or to terminate the security consultancy to allow the contracted Assassin a clearer run to the target. It generally boils down to which side is prepared to pay most, and some unseemly bidding wars have erupted. Sometimes the guild does nothing and allows a situation to run its natural course. This is generally held to be instructive and ecucational to all concerned, and bets are frequently laid, based on the relative age and experience of the two Assassins, or "working firms", involved**.(3)**

Sometimes Assassins are contracted to act as a higher-class debt recovery service. Many upper-class Assassins scorn such tasks as unutterably bourgeois, fit only for scholarship pupils or Dark Clerks. But for those Assassins who take on these jobs, the pickings are rich – a percentage of the debt is generally added to the completion fee, and it is very rare for the debtor to be inhumed. Simply shaken down and induced into making payment.

Some Assassins also enforce City law. This does not happen too often these days with the ascendancy of Commander Vimes and a resurgent Watch, but in older times, a person exiled by the Patrician to a foreign location of choice was often escorted to the docks and put on a ship by Guild members, whose responsibility was to ensure they left. In extreme cases, Guild members might be contracted to escort the exile to their final destination. Lifelong friendships have been forged this way – what has been called the _Hubsvenska Syndrome, _where a prisoner and his/her captors bond and discover common interests and friendship.**(4)**

As Emmanuelle sketched out a course of action to Johanna, both women were in full agreement: Balthazar Smith-Rhodes would only come back for more if he were not dissuaded. Johanna did not want him dead. _Eh bien_, we can, then, do _this_. And if you will formally contract me to do so, Johanna, then I will do this for you out of friendship. And I will require certain kindnesses from you, Scrote, _mon amour_.

* * *

**(1) **I visualise Scrote Jones as having the same magnetically greasy, somewhat debauched and seedy forty-Gauloises-a-day sexuality as French cinema's bad boy Serge Gainsborough, crossed with Welsh big-time cannabis dealer Howard Marks, with possibly a hint of Jack Nicholson's "devil-may-care" insouciance. A sort of crumpled "my best days are only just behind me" aura, like the older Mick Jagger.

**(2) **The equivalent ethnic slur on Roundworld is to say somebody has _welshed_ on a gambling debt.

**(3) **Assassins usually act as individuals, but there have also been teams, known officially as "Names" and unoffcially as "working firms", composed of two or more Assasins who enjoy working together in pursuit of a contract. A typical firm are the Marriage Guidance Counsellors, composed of Joan Sanderson-Reeves and Doctor Davinia Bellamy, women brought together by a shared interest (see my fanfic **_Murder Most 'Orrible_) **

The educational aspects of two Assassins in confrontation, one gurading a client and the other seeking to inhume that client? Well, what if Johanna had brought out from her inside pocket, not the money owed by her uncle but a poison-tipped throwing knife? Emmanuelle was aware of the possibility and, friendship notwithstanding, was reaching for her sword...

**(4) **What Roundworld psychology calls _The Stockholm Syndrome. _


	3. An Assassin prepares

_**The Black Sheep: part Three. Never take advantage of an Assassin. **_

Emmanuelle had accrued some leave from the Guild School. As it overlapped a week's mid-term holiday, the Guild was happy for her to take it immediately. Besides, it was accepted that the qualified teaching staff at the Guild School should not be disadvantaged by being tied to the School for nine or ten months of the year, and should, wherever it was practicable, be allowed to accept professional contracts. This was viewed as a good thing, as it allowed the teaching staff to refresh their skills and keep up to date with current trends in the profession so as to be better educators.

Therefore she made arrangements for Black Widow House to be supervised by other teachers and teaching assistants during her leave of absence. Alice Band, almost as good a swordswoman as she was, would share covering her classes with Miss Pretty Butterfly. Both were more than able to cover beginners' and intermediate classes, and it would be advantageous to advanced students to learn from a teacher whose techniques were slightly different. Or, in the case of Butterfly, for them to witness and learn from Agatean sword technique.

Administrative details sorted out, and Johanna having lodged a suitable official contract with the Guild retaining Emmanuelle to perform a specified service for her, she retired to her rooms to pack for a journey and plan a course of action.

The man she sought could be anywhere on the Disc, or at least on the Central Continent, by now. Intelligent guessing would cut the possibilities down, anyway. She considered what was known about the client. He had last been seen in this town the previous weekend, four days previously, to wheedle money out of his niece by a most odious form of moral blackmail. That, and the threat of family iconographs of Johanna as a toddler. His gambling debts had placed him one step ahead of the Dealers, who she knew from Scrote Jones were just about to deal him selected cards from the suit of Swords.**(1)**1Therefore he has left town as a matter of pressing urgency.

So he could only be four days' travel away, at most. Every additional day might add another…. she considered. … a hundred and fifty miles, if he were continually travelling by the fastest coach. But horses needed to stop periodically and many of the roads were not good. Call it a hundred and ten miles? So everywhere within five hundred miles radius of Ankh-Morpork was possible. And although he called himself an adventurer, one of the dwindling and increasingly elderly band of Heroes, she suspected he would now be most at home in cities. She understood this: Emmanuelle had done the mandatory courses in Wilderness Survival and had hated every second of it. She believed with all her heart that the countryside, all that boring and most uncomfortable empty space between cities that was not lit up at night, was for other people. An Assassin of her sort survived the wilderness in the comfort of a fast coach, with wine and good food and congenial travelling company and soft beds to sleep in at night.

She smiled. A debt she owed to Johanna had been the unstinting aid her fellow trainee had given her in those most abominable weeks of living in tents, foot-slogging everywhere like some wretched _poilu_, trapping and cooking and eating your own food (she shuddered at the memory) and getting wet, tired, dirty, sweaty and uncomfortable. Johanna knew those things that she did not, and she had made it her business to get Emmanuelle through that part of the syllabus. _And she cooked a most agreeable rabbit stew, in the circumstances. And spared me the need to kill the poor creature and skin and gut it. _

No, she owed her friend many favours. She refocused on the thought of _heroes._ There were fewer and fewer in Ankh-Morpork with every passing year. The clacks and the coachroads had cut and intersected the Central Continent to such an extent that there were really fewer spaces out there that could be called wildernesses and uncharted territory. Their old questing grounds, places to search for sentient monsters to fight and treasure to retrieve, relics of old Mage Wars and of the long-ago Dark War itself, were long since empty of both monsters and old treasure. No new entrants were entering the hero trade. Old heroes were dying or retiring. Or finding new jobs. For instance, Carrot Ironfoundersson, who in former times had all the heritage and profile to become a romantic hero as a King Without A Throne, had settled for a Watchman's job. The Mended Drum, long their local in the City, had in its own indefinable way gone, if not upmarket, then cross-market, in a way that excluded its former clientele. Times had changed. The Young Men's Pagan Association Hostel now took in backpackers from Fourecks and the Foggy Islands and Rimwards Howondaland, rather than depending on keeping open rooms for Heroes on their brief triumphant returns to the City. It was entirely possible Howondaland Smith had stayed there recently, till his money ran out and he came to put the squeeze on Johanna.

_Old heroes find new jobs. Hold that thought, Emmanuelle. _

She smiled as her train of thought found a station.

_So simple. I commence with a hairdo. And a manicure. And let us float the boat. A pedicure also. A lot gentler than the one Johanna did for me on that accursed march when I was nearly crying from the pain of the blisters on my feet. _

The old loathsome memory arose. On a cold November day, the Compte de Yoyo had called a halt to the march he had been subjecting the trainees of the Mature Students' Class to. Through her pain and misery, Emmanuelle had noted that Alice Band and Johanna appeared to be almost the only two who appeared not to be suffering and in distress. Johanna, her appointed trail buddy, had ordered her to stand up and follow her. Emmanuelle had wearily staggered to a fast flowing mountain stream where Johanna had barked the command to get her boots and socks off. She had nearly passed out from the pain of taking her socks off, but Johanna had looked with disgust at the ruins of her feet. _Ma foi, I can never wear smart sandals again! _

_When did you lest change your socks? _Johanna had demanded. "Your feet are filthy. The dirt between your toes is disgusting. Clean them, or you will infect those blisters!"

Through the pain, she noticed Johanna taking out a first-aid kit of her own devising.

"Luckily for you, I know how to deal with these things. But I wern you, it will _hurt_. Hold still!"

And then Emmanuelle had cried. She could see the Compte was watching, but he was doing nothing to reprimand or prevent this atrocious bullying and infliction of pain. She tried not to watch what Johanna was doing with cotton wool wipes, medicinal alcohol, and a _razor blade_…

"I learnt this skill in the Howondalandian Ermy." Johanna explained, as she mercilessly cut and cleaned and dressed wounds, and Emmanuelle whimpered. "Heavens ebove, woman! You're merrried to an officer in the Kletchien Foreign Legion, aren't you? Don't you _know_ their slogans?"

"Apart from the one that goes "_Er…_".?" Emmanuelle had tried to joke, through the pain.

"You cen meke a joke. _Gut._ Thet is pleasing. It shows to me thet you hev not given up.". the Howondalandian girl observed. "No. I mean the one thet goes "_Marchez ou crevez!_"

_March or croak_, Emmanuelle reflected.

"It is thet simple, Emmie. _March or die_! Out here, the choices are stark bleck or white ones!" Johanna urged her, as she applied some sort of soothing salve.

_I'm glad _**you**_ said that, _somebody had muttered.

"End you cen only march _on your feet_! " Johanna said, finishing. "Now do es I do."

Johanna swiftly removed her own boots and socks. _No blisters_, Emmanuelle noted, enviously.

Then she dunked both feet into the ice-cold stream, which must be taking snow-melt down from the higher mountains. Emmanuelle hesitated for a moment, then plunged her own abused feet into the water. The ice cold was agony for a few seconds, then she felt all pain sensation ebbing away. The two of them sat there, companionably watching the river.

"Thank you." Emmanuelle said, after a while. Johanna nodded.

"Rinse those filthy socks, while you're sitting there. Get the filth out of them. Then wring them out thoroughly. You hev dry ones in your peck to put on. Keep your feet in the water es long es you cen, before you put on fresh socks end your boots. You will see why when we set off egain."

The Compte de Yoyo had praised Johanna for her impeccable handling of the situation and her application of a field remedy, and he trusted everyone else had been watching?

. Emmanuelle had donned fresh socks and put the boots on again, marvelling that she could put them on at all, and that the swollen flesh of her feet had settled down to something like natural. For the first half hour or so of the renewed march, she had felt as if she was walking on air, totally pain-free, until full sensation returned. But by then they were making camp for the night, and the Compte took the opportunity to have Johanna inspect _everyone'_s feet and do what she could before, as he put it, "the temporary inconvenience of a blister becomes the permanent affliction of an ulcer. Oh, and do _wash_ your feet first, out of courtesy to Miss Smith-Rhodes. The river is over there."

Emmanuelle flexed her toes in the comfortable and fashionable city boots that were not meant for the wild outdoors. No, she owed Johanna. Then she set off for her hairdo. After that, Johanna had got her a dinner invitation, at a place that could provide other leads to the client's current whereabouts. _Bon. A civilised dinner among sophisticated people. _She smiled, happily, got her coat, hat, and bag, and set out, checking herself in the mirror as she left.

_

* * *

_

**(1) **In the Roundworld Tarot as well as the Discworld's Caroc, the suit of Swords has unmistakeable bad luck associations. The odd-numbered cards are the worst. The Three is _**sorrow **_and _**separation**_. The Five is _**defeat**_. The Seven is _**futility. **_The nine is _**Death**_ and _**Destruction**_. While the even-numbered Swords are more upbeat and positive, the ten is _**Ruin. **_The Gamblers' Guild enforcers are well aware of this and deal Caroc readings as part of a caring personalised service to their clients. The future will inevitably be short and spiky unless (i) certain debts are paid to the Guild; or (ii) You will go on a journey - get out of town _now_, having incurred the Guild's displeasure. The Prince of Swords can also be depicted, legitimately, as a black-clad Assassin on the way to do the deed.


	4. Intelligence gathering, a la DeuxEpees

_**The Black Sheep: part Four. The hunt begins.**_

_A return to Conina's, as many have requested. _

Emmanuelle was vaguely flattered to see the vampire iconographer Otto Chriek had set up outside the salon, in the company of several other lesser photographers. A large troll was guarding the salon door and by her presence was ensuring the _siutteratzi_ kept a respectful distance.

She was vaguely disappointed to realise the iconographers were not there for her, but Otto Chriek, who was professional enough to know that one day he might well be there for her and would require her co-operation, called

"_Smile for ze iconograph, Madame Emmanuelle! Most kind! Zis is for __**Wotcher!**__ Magazine!__**(1) **__My esteemed colleagues are from __**Warmth!**__ And __**Tepidity! **_

The iconographers had no qualms about practicing on a naturally attractive and iconogenic woman, even if she wasn't the one they were really here to see. Besides, big-name Assassins were news in their own right, especially the prettier female ones.

Ego-boosted by the attention, Emmanuelle walked on to the door. The troll, who was a fetching lustrous deep ultramarine blue flecked with gold, nodded to her, one professional to another.

"Who's in there, Lazuli?" Emmanuelle asked.

"Jools, der fashion model." the troll replied. "Mrs Harebut asked me to mind der door and keep der press at a decent distance."

That made sense: Lazuli was normally a stylist and fashion consultant to troll females, since Conina had thought it worthwhile to branch out to a new market. Three super-heavyweight chairs had been constructed at the shipyard and built into a salon extension set apart for exclusive use by trolls, but not segregated from the area used by human and dwarf women. Salon banter now took on a new dimension. Lazuli and her colleague Terrazi were an accepted part of the team and were even capable of doing some jobs for human clients during busy times.

Emmanuelle smiled at the _Respectful Reminder From The management: All Thieves, Heroines, Assassins and other Clients who routinely go about their business in possession of Armaments are asked to check in their weapons at Reception so as to prevent any regrettable incidents. You may collect them again on the way out. Thank you! _And did what was normally an unthinkeable thing: she loosened and removed the sword belt that was normally as much a part of her as her arms and legs, and handed it over to the welcoming receptionist, Sharon. Sharon took it with thanks and hung it over a coat-peg behind the desk. Emmanuelle counted and identified other weapons hanging there: two Thief-standard belt-kits with scabbarded daggers, and a Dwarf's axe-holster, with a standard prospecting axe in its quick-release sling.

"I can see Mrs Harebut is busy." she said, nodding down the shop to the bustle around one particular chair.

"Oh, she's always got time for _you,_ Madame!" Sharon assured her. "When she realises you're here she'll at least start you off, or do the finishing touches. We certainly wouldn't let the trainees do you unsupervised!"

Emmanuelle was directed to complimentary coffee and the magazine selection in the reception area. She leafed through _**Wotcher!,**_which managed to have very big pictures and captions that did little more than identify the people, the social setting, and the cost of the clothes and jewellery they were wearing.

_Seen at a charity ball at Ramkin Manor in aid of the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons! Recycling magnate Mr Harry King and Mrs King in the company of Lord and Lady Rust…well-founded rumour has it that the Patrician intends to raise Mr King to the nobility in recognition of his services to industry and in making this a cleaner city. Lord Rust is clearly showing how much he welcomes the news of this potential new recipient of a peerage…_

The Guild library and the school staffroom took several copies of _**Wotcher!**_. Officially because it held that this was a source of information and provided ample clear recognition pictures of potential clients. Unofficially, because Lord Downey moved in these circles and liked to see how important he was, relative to the city's other notables. Emmanuelle smiled. Very occasionally she and the other lady Assassins figured in its pages. For some reason the papers found them a fascinating subject for articles and iconographs. Emmanuelle had no objection to this, as long as it only related to public and social affairs and not to active contracts or speculation about which Guild member was responsible. (Downey and the Patrician sought to discourage this, anyway).

"Emmie!"

Conina Harebut was the same as always, still slim, still exotically platinum-blonde, still with the same dark richly tanned skin. She had retired as an active Heroine to open the hairdressing and pampering salon for the city's working professional women, a trade niche she had foreseen all those years ago when on those sweaty and uncomfortable expeditions such women unaccountably favoured. Although there were fewer and fewer barbarians and heroes these days, her beauty salon had become a roaring success with women whose active lives in places where there was no chance of a decent hairdo left them craving for proper attention the moment they got back to the city again. As old-time heroes faded out, there was an ample supply of customers from among Thieves, Assassins, the new emancipated self-proclaimed female Dwarfs, Watchwomen, Teachers' Guild members, and others whose daily lives involved hand-to-hand combat in uncomfortable places. As she was a naturally good hairdresser, even Seamstresses came here for her personal attention and were willing to pay a premium for it. Conina had arrived, at exactly the right time and place.

They kissed on both cheeks, in the Quirmian style.

"Everything, please, Conina, if you would be so kind." Emmanuelle requested.

"Everything?" Conina raised an eyebrow. Emmanuelle belatedly remembered there was a fashion for an intimate personal hairstyling known as a Paraquatian. Some Dwarf females used the term to refer to a shocking new beard-trimming style which left both cheeks and the sides of the jaw shaven, with a sort of reverse Mohican forming a long goatee beard centred on the point of the jaw.

"Well… hold the Paraquatian, _s'il vous plait_" she requested, hurriedly. "For myself, head, feet and fingers."

"Whip 'em off, then!" Conina requested her, leading her to a chair. Emmanuelle slipped off her boots, hitched up her skirt on a matter-of-fact way, and rolled her stockings off, reflecting that were it not for the troll guarding the door, the iconographers outside would have the sort of picture opportunity they dreamt of. She stowed her gloves and stockings and boots underneath the chair, and settled down for a pampering. From Conina herself it would cost many dollars, but, _eh bien_, it was worth it. And Conina insisted on doing lady Assassins herself, for a reason. Supervising a couple of juniors in getting water to the right temperature and loading it with appropriate aromatherapy oils – Emmanuelle noted they were provided by Bellamy's of Pellicool Steps, which she knew was a guarantee of quality**(2)** – a footbath and a hair-rinsing station were set up at opposite ends.

"You might mention to Davinia that the lavender essence is really popular." Conina said. "It's walking out of the box and we could do with refills. That and the elderflower. Now tell me, what's new out of Filigree Street?"

They exchanged Guild gossip for a while, Emmanuelle knowing that Conina kept in touch with Heroes and the Thieves' Guild. Her salon was a hive of gossip as the customers traded information that was professionally useful, and again, she wondered if the mainly male Guild heads had realised yet about the sub-current and alternative intelligence network that flourished here.

"Do you see many Heroes in the shop these days? The old-time adventurers?" Emmanuelle asked. Conina sighed.

"To be honest, I'm glad I got out when I did." she said. "When my father went, that was the end of an era. And the old men with him. I see Red Scharron in here once a month. Although she's more Faded Ginger Florrie these days. And Herrena bowed to the inevitable. I give her a pearl blonde rinse so that it looks stylish and even, as if it was _meant _to fade to that colour. At least she's dressing more her age now. She must be pushing sixty."

"I hear she has terrible rheumatism."

"That, and arthritis. Being out in all weathers dressed the way she was. A lot of people warned her she was storing up problems for her old age."

"What doe she do now?"

"She's retired from hero work and adventuring. She's concierge at the YWPA. It's steady work in the warm, but she complains about those Fourecksian backpacker girls who stay there. No idea how to keep quiet at nights, she says"

Conina sighed again. Recounting the list of Names was melancholy work.

"And there's Diome."

"Witch of the Night?"

"No, just Diome." said Conina. "She had to drop the "witch" part after those Lancre witches caught up with her and had a quiet word. She's a ward nurse at the Lady Sybil now. Retrained, you see. They use her in Casualty on the late night Friday and Saturday shifts where she says her old skills come in handy if ever there's trouble."

I see." said Emmanuelle, sighing with pleasure as the salon juniors began work on her feet.

"I hear Howondaland Smith-Rhodes also had to change his name?" she asked, innocently.

"Oh, _him_? Between you and me he's a bit of a fraud. The sort that gets the profession a bad name. Apparently his family cut to the chase when it got back to Howondaland that he was using the family name. They didn't bother with Assassins or anything like that. They engaged a _lawyer_ to track him down."

Conina shivered.

"That's old money for you. Ruthless. They made him drop the "Rhodes" from his name and agreed Smith was nicely vague. They let him keep custody of that half. He came here last weekend presuming on old acquaintance, trying to borrow money I know I'd never see again. Nijel gave him a cup of coffee and a biscuit and then saw him to the door."

Emmanuelle nodded. "Did you know he went to the Guild then? And took Johanna for all he could? This being a family matter, the poor girl could hardly say "no"".

Conina's eyes narrowed as she heard the story.

"And you are now retained to track him down and teach him some manners and common decency? Good for you! Oh, excuse me…"

It appeared that Jools the supermodel was now ready to leave, together with her entourage. Emmanuelle watched her go, not envious of the girl's beauty, but appreciative of the way she carried it so lightly and uncomplicatedly. The delighted smile and "Wotcher, love!" to Emmanuelle on her way out was something to appreciate, not to disdain. Emmanuelle noted that there was some bickering over the bill – the rather foppish and fey manager, Pépé was the creature's name, appeared to believe Jools should have been done for free, 'cos look at the publicity, love! Conina replied that her salon didn't _need_ the publicity, thank you. We did perfectly alright before and we shall continue to do afterwards., and that's _still_ fifty dollars. I'm _sure_ if you keep the receipt the Accountants' Guild can make it deductible for tax purposes?

Eventually, they settled on forty-five, which Pépé paid with bad grace, Jools urging him not to make a fuss. What might have swayed things was the Agatean luggage, Xingli, who served as cash register and security system, and was barring their way to the door as only a Luggage can. This was not lost on Pépé.

"_Do_ hurry back!" Conina said, drily. "You might find you would not have got out of Hugo's for less than seventy!"

Conina returned to Emmanuelle.

"Did he give any indication as to where he was going when Nijel talked to him?" she asked. Conina reflected.

"He said something about Genua being off-limits, as the fastest way of getting there is the river-boats, and the Gamblers' Guild run the onboard card-games and casinos. Although he hoped he could get his debts paid and the Guild off his back as he'd, in his own well-chosen words, _primed the right people_."

"He certainly did." murmured Emmanuelle, lulled by the steady _snip-snip. _

"He mentioned Brindisi." Conina added, thoughtfully. "I also happen to know there are people in Sto Kerrig who haven't entirely given up on him yet."

_Brindisi by way of Sto Kerrig. That makes sense. _

"Ah, merci!" Emmanuelle thanked her.

"Just get Jo at least some of her money back!" Conina said. "And don't be too gentle!"

Emmanuelle reassured her she was taking this contract for friendship and personal satisfaction. And later, her hair and body in perfect condition, she went on to her next bout of mixing business with pleasure.

* * *

**(1) **_**Wotcher!**_ The city's premier gossip and celebrity magazine, from the publishers of the Ankh-Morpork Times. Society balls, charity dinners, shutteratzi snaps… _**Warmth! **_and _**Tepidity!**_ are its downmarket rivals.

**(2) **Davinia Bellamy, now an Assassin and Guild teacher, still maintained her floristry business, under capable sub-managers. While these days she did not sell the additional plant-related services that had got her into trouble and led her to the Guild (see my fanfic _**Murder most 'Orrible**_) , she had seen, after one of Mericet's classes in distilling poisons from natural herbal essences, the potential of the alchemical technique involved for, for example, capturing the fragrance of summer flowers to add drop by drop to your bathwater. She had invested in the fractional distillation equipment involved, trained some of her floristry staff in using it, and now sold her own range of essential plant oils. She also did the other sort for use as an Assassin, and had in fact chalked up a couple more contract completions by providing less life-enhancing and beneficial baths for selected clients. Well, you can't keep a Marriage Guidance Counsellor down forever.


	5. dinner at the Embassy

_**The Black Sheep: part Five. A National Embarrassment is discussed. **_

The next step that evening was dinner at the Howondalandian Embassy.

Emanuelle dressed with care, both to impress and to convey to the world that she was a professional Assassin on Guild business. She would also respect the convention that said she had to reassure, on her honour as an Assassin, that nobody at the Embassy was the target for her professional attentions: this was a social call on the family of her close friend Johanna Smith-Rhodes. This sort of thing was necessary for an Assassin who wished to enjoy a full social life, as people tended to worry otherwise.

She took a cab to the Embassy with Johanna, who had ensured the Embassy gate guard knew that an unfamiliar Assassin was on the guest list for tonight and not there for professional purposes. Emmanuelle weighed them up on the way in: older soldiers, veterans of hard fighting in the jungles and deserts that bordered their country, and not just the impressively-uniformed decoration that, for instance, the Brindisian Embassy employed next door. Their khaki uniforms could not have been drabber or plainer, but this was no comfort to an experienced Assassin who was casually weighing up the chances of fighting through them.

_The plainer the uniform, the harder the soldier _was a Guild maxim. And they kept the uniforms well-pressed and their armament sharp – albeit with black-annealed blades, lest a glint of metal betray their position in the jungle.

_No, I would not care to fight more than…three… such men in a single engagement, _Emmanuelle decided. Even though she took care to flirt gently with the men as she passed.

Johanna introduced her, as an old friend, to the Ambassador and his wife, her uncle and aunt. Emmanuelle read him as an old-time career diplomat, shrewd, clever and observant, married to a woman whose diplomatic skills extended to piling up the little gold-wrapped chocolate balls, and getting them just-so on the silver salver. _Which is not to say this is not a valid diplomatic skill. The well-kept and pleasant Lady Frijda is there to charm and captivate and be the perfect hostess. Pieter will wait for the moment when hospitality and good food and wine make the charmed guest relax too much, and say something out of turn. They are in fact an ideal diplomatic couple. _

Emmanuelle was also mindful of the fact many wives were wary about letting her be alone with their husbands. (sometimes, she had to admit, with good reason.) While she found herself liking Pieter van der Graaf and appreciating his intellect and dry wit, she had to remind herself this was Johanna's uncle, and in any case she read him as the sort of man who would never be unfaithful to his wife (although he might sometimes _think _about it.) And besides, he was a diplomat: he would know all about one of the oldest traps, the one baited with honey, used to ensnare and compromise diplomatic staff who were feeling lonely, a long way from home.**(1)**

Besides, she wanted no complications, so she took care to be as charming and attentive as she could be with Lady Frijda.

"Such beautifully cut clothing, madame!" Frijda enthused, feeling the quality of Emmanuelle's blouse. "Don't you agree, Katerina?"

Katerina was a junior secretary at the Embassy. Emmanuelle gathered she and Johanna had been to school together. _It must have looked like one of those pairings you see at the Blue Cat Café, with Katerina the ultra-feminine one, pretty as a china doll is pretty, and Johanna, dressed as a man and wearing weapons. And Johanna is fiercely intelligent. Katerina appears to have only froth to prevent her ears from meeting. _

"I have a couturier in the Maul who looks after my wardrobe" Emmanuelle said, modestly. "She watches ze fashion news for ze latest styles out of Quirm and Brindisi and Genua. This blouse is ze latest Quirmian cut."

"Do you find it – limiting – that you cen only dress in bleck?" Katerina de Mauritz asked, curiously. Emmanuelle shrugged.

"Well, tonight I am technically off- duty. Although in one important respect I am here as an Assassin, because I have a request to make of His Excellency. Several, in fact. It is perhaps more polite, as in that regard I am here for professional reasons. You are right in that when I am off-duty, I can dress in whatever colours I please, but black flatters me. And it pays to advertise!"

"No doubt!" said Frijda. "Hev you never tried to get _Johanna _interested in dressing end presenting herself in a more ladylike way?" She glanced disapprovingly at her niece, who was in the usual comfortable bush khaki. Her eyes held the time-honoured _"Although I love you, why can you not be more like your nice and beautifully dressed friend?"_

Johanna grimaced. Emmanuelle smiled. "Some things are merely impossible, Lady Frijda. Although when she chooses, she can look _remarkably_ feminine!"

This time, the look on Johanna's face said _If you were not doing me a favour, I'd get you back for that!_ Emmanuelle smiled sweetly at her.

The sad-eyed brown-skinned major-domo rang the dinner bell. The Ambassador and his select group went through for dinner.

Seated, grace having been said to Offler and Io, thanks for the wine to Frigga, the Summer Lady, and to Bibulous, and thanks for the fact nothing had stuck in drawers nor broken in the wash to Anoia and Cephut (God of Cutlery and Plateware), they could sit to eat and drink**.(2)**

"You are a Countess, Emmanuelle?" Frijda asked, with deep respect. Johanna rolled her eyes tolerantly. There was no nobility at home in White Howondaland. Trust her aunt to be swayed by it in a city that runs on the verdamte stuff.

"Hardly that, Lady Frijda. It is true that on the death of his father, my husband became Compte de Lapoignard, in addition to his Army rank of Colonel. But so long as his mother lives, as Dowager Comptesse de Lapoignard, I must remain a mere _madame_. C'est la vie!"**(3) **She shrugged, as expressively as only a Quirmian can.

"Your husband is in the Klatchian Foreign Legion, I believe?" Ambassador Pieter inquired. He had heard some of the rumours about Emmanuelle. "It must make some things easier to live with!"

"It is convenient, perhaps." She said. "We both have space for ten months of the year in which to live our own lives, and for the remaining two, I am as loyal and dutiful and loving as wife to him as he can possibly ask. "

"And a Legionnaire cen quickly forget!" the Ambassador said, with a faint smile on his face.

"_Obliviscor. Il faut qu'il s'oublier toutes_". she agreed, sparring gently.

"_Certainemaint, c'est un vrai besoin!"_ the ambassador agreed. Emmanuelle recalled that Quirmian was the first language of diplomacy. Even so, she was impressed the Ambassador could hold a conversation in the language, even with a noticeable Howondalandian accent. They discussed Quirm for a while, places and people, with the Ambassador wryly noting that while he had been at the embassy there, their daughters had spent a couple of years under the _formidable_ Miss Butts and Miss Delcross at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies. He added a few little jokes at their expense.

"But the reason for your being here." van der Graaf said, reverting to Morporkian. "I em concerned, yes, ebout whet happened to Johanna et the weekend. I em elso pleased thet you dissuaded the Gemblers' Guild from sending a _certain letter_ here for my ettention. I owe you my thenks for thet. While it is true thet one of the tesks of en Embessy or a Consulate is to provide a certain well-judged level of meteriel essistence to its citizens who fall into trouble a long wey from Home, es far es I em concerned, _Mijnheer_ Balthazar Smith-Rhodes hes hed _ell_ the bites he is ever going to get et _thet_ particular guava!"

"Such en _awful_ man!" Lady Frijda said, with a shudder. "Funny, yes, end cherming, in his wey, but he hes no conscience. He is a parasite!"

"Emoral, certainly. End a total emberresment to our country, ever since he errived on this continent nearly thirty years ago!"

"And to you personally?" Emmanuelle asked, gently. The Ambassador smiled.

"Only in that there is a family connection. My sister – Johanna's mother – merried into the Smith-Rhodes family. She acquired the prodigal Balthazar as a brother-in-law. He hes presumed in the pest on the relationship to me by marriage, and borrowed money. Which I hev never seen egain, by the way. So, knowing the Embessy gates would be closed to him, he chose to prey on Johanna, who was dutiful end did what she thought was expected of her. I have written to her parents. Her father will be engry. She gets her temperament from thet side of the family, by the way."

Emmanuelle smiled. She'd seen iconographs of Johanna's parents. Her father's nickname was Barbarossa – Redbeard. And he appeared to be at least the size of a Ridcully, larger than life. Once angry, he would be hard to stop.

_It all fits together…_

"He has been like this all his life?"

"Unfortunately, yes." said van der Graaf. "I got my security head to dig out the file on him. Liutnant Verkramp provided it with ill-grace, as mere _criminels_ end _grifters_ are not nearly es much a threat to the Staadt as seditionists end liberals. Verkramp seemed to think I was wasting his time, in fect!"

"But certainly an embarrassment." Emmanuelle agreed. A thought struck her. "His acts of deception must surely have come to the attention of the civil authorities in Ankh-Morpork. Is it perhaps the case that Lord Vetinari may have raised the matter with you? During an otherwise informal meeting, _peut-être?" _

_Ah. Bulls-eye, Emmanuelle. He looks, for an instant, as if he remembers an exquisite sting. _

"Which is where we can essist each other, madame." Van der Graaf said, decisively. "You are contrected by the Guild to seek him out. He is a national of my country who I would prefer to be quietly end epproprietly dealt with."

"But you are not going to…" Katerina said, with a sudden horror. This was echoed by Lady Frijda.

"Assuredly not, ladies." Emmanuelle reassured them. "What is the point of teaching a lesson to a dead man? I wish to show him the error of his ways and if possible to retrieve Johanna's money, that she was forced to spend to rescue the good name of her family. Which includes you. Then there is a long-term solution thet I wish to discuss with you, Ambassador, and which requires your good graces. Is it possible, do you think, that I might be able to see the very meticuluous Lieutenant Verkramp's security file on Balthazar Smith-Rhodes?"

"It is in my office." Van der Graaf said. "I am permitting a lot by giving a foreign national eccess to such a file, end I regret I cennot ellow you to take it eway from here, nor cen I ellow you to make copies. But the Guild teaches you the velue of a good memory, I understand? Ah, here comes the main course. Ostrich steaks**(4)**."

They spoke of other things over dinner. Afterwards, the ambassador took Emmanuelle and Johanna to his study. Johanna was interested: she had never got this close to a BOSS file before, and she wanted to see what sort of information the Bureau of State Security thought worth keeping on suspect individuals. It might give her an idea of what was in hers.

Over a round of very good Quirmian brandy, Emmanuelle studied the rather thick file on Johanna's uncle, noting he was classed as a criminal degenerate with subversive tendencies. Where the file was in _Vondalaans_ only, Johanna deftly translated the details for her.

"Three counts of miscegenation, in contravention of the Racial Seperation Acts, between ages fifteen and twenty-one."

Emmanuelle's brow furrowed in puzzlement.

"I cannot understand. Were the ladies concerned under the age of responsibility…"

"It's a Howondalandian thing, Emmie.."

"Oh. I see. He was white. And they were black of skin… in your country, that is an offence. I think I perceive."

"Hence he ticks the box marked "degenerate". Johanna said.

"It rather brightened Verkramp's day to discover that one!" the Ambassador said. "He clearly seemed to think I was wasting his time over a mere _criminal. _But to Verkramp's mind, miscegenation should be a henging offence!"

"A secret policeman with the usual fine grasp of what is truly important, then." Emmanuelle said, keeping an absolutely straight face.

"Indeed, madame." Replied van der Graaf, equally gravely. "End Balthazar's rejoinder to the court earned him en edditional fine for contempt of court and pelpable leck of remorse. He told the judge _When you are hungry end somebody offers you chicken, you don't care if it's the white meat or the dark!" _After thet, when he came out of prison, the Smith-Rhodes family took him to the docks and gave him a certain amount of money end a one-way ticket on a very slow ship to Ankh-Morpork. Before your birth, Johanna, but it perhaps explains the man."

"And he began his new life here honestly enough. Toughened by life on the Veldt and a prison sentence, he was a genuine hero and adventurer for a few years. Then he discovered he could get the same reward for a lot less exertion by faking it. Not all the time, but occasionally, when he felt like an easier time. And then as he got older and accumulated a few wounds, the fakery took over from the reality. And he began shaking people down for money. This got so blatant that it got back to Howondaland. And the Smith-Rhodes family took action to prevent its good name being sullied by association. He is today…fifty nine?"

"Several years older than me." the ambassador confirmed. "Not an age to be living rough in a country with an unforgiving climate."

Unspoken words were heavy on the air. Words like _Bloody nuisance_ and _family embarrassment_ and _lying cheating thieving old buzzard!_ vied with _he's getting no younger_ and _can't we do something for him?_ Emmanuelle was sensitive enough to read them all.

"Please trust me to do what I may." she requested. "Ambassador, I said I would require your good graces? This is what I propose to do… " and she outlined her plan.

"Thet mey work." the Ambassador said, nodding. "I will prepare a letter of introduction to my country's embassies and consulates you may pass on your route. On my authority, it will esk my fellow Embessadors, and instruct the Consuls, to offer you every essistence. The letter will elso stress thet you are working with the full knowledge and approval of the Government of Rimwards Howondaland. Which will be true when they receive my report. I will elso clecks ell embassies end consulates to warn them Balthazar Smith-Rhodes is up to his old tricks, end thet nobody, under eny circumstances, is to edvence money to him. If possible, for them to detain him for the ettention of the Essessins' Guild operative who is seeking to errest him es she is ecting with my approval. Is this ecceptable, madame?"

"Completely, Monsieur L'Ambassador!"

"Good!" he took her hand and gallantly kissed it.

"Let us return to the main room. My wife is prone to worry if I em ewey too long. Even with Johanna es chaperone!"

* * *

1**(1) **Emmanuelle had attempted to teach a module in Seduction Techniques and Honey Trap Theory to senior girls. The course had been ended prematurely after complaints from parents, and several Upper Sixth girls trying to defect from the Assassins' School to the Seamstresses. But Lord Vetinari had asked Emmanuelle round to an informal lunch at the palace, and had invited her to explain the syllabus and course goals at great length. He had listened with great attentiveness and thanked her for her time. A few days later, Lady T'Malia received a letter from the Palace suggesting the course be revised, this time as a degree-level module for postgraduate students and aimed at female Assassins of an appropriate turn of mind and general aptitude. What Vetinari may have in mind as a long-term goal is not yet clear, but foreign diplomats in Ankh-Morpork might be advised to get to know the health-giving benefits of a cold shower. Or else, bring the wife.

2 **(2) **Grace before meals can get _complex _on the Discworld, where a good dinner involves thanking up to twenty-three deities for the munificence.

3 **(3) **Emmanuelle had carefully let her voice go into neutral at this point. She prayed for somebody to take a contract out on her mother-in-law. Their relationship was not good, and the old lady despised her commoner slut of a daughter-in-law. She blocked all Emmanuelle's tentative attempts to claim the Comptesse title, ensured none of the monies or revenues of the Lapoignard estates could go to her, and had threatened to take a horsewhip to her back several times. Emmanuelle shrank from taking out a contract herself, reluctantly accepting that it probably wasn't ethical, and for all the old beldame's faults, her son loved her, and she, Emmanuelle, was a dutiful loving wife in at least _some_ respects.

(4) The first living ostriches had arrived as exhibits for the City Zoo. Once given regular meals, a large field to run in and a shed to shelter from the rain, they had started to breed like... well, any flightless egg-laying bird with no natural predators from Home that could get at them, although they were nearby. Any fox getting into this chicken-coop would be mercilessly stomped flat. with an exponential ostrich population, Johanna had brokered a licence-agreement with a nearby farmer to take the overspill, and had even taken the trouble to humanely kill one of the birds and butcher it for the table, explaining where the meat cuts were, and demonstrating how it was cooked back Home. Ostrich was now sold as a luxury meat, the eggs were marketed as "the 56-minute soft boiled egg - feeds a family and enough yolk for everyone!" Afte it was served at a Palace dinner, ostrich meat became a popular delicacy among the moneyed class and expat Howondalandians. Feathers and things were sold to the fashion houses and milliners, and the Zoo took a large percenbtage of everything sold.


	6. Sto Kerrig

_**The Black Sheep: part Six. An encounter in Sto Kerrig.**_

_With apologies to my readership in Holland. But hey, any Roundworld country given the Pratchett treatment has all the knobs turned up way past eleven, right? time to turn our attention to all things Dutch..._

Sto Kerrig is the smallest and often overlooked member of the Sto plains trinity. Officially, these days, a protectorate of its far larger neighbour Sto Helit and owing nominal allegiance to Queen Keliherrena**(1)**, this is a rich flat country given over to agriculture and a slow, easy, rural life. A long way away from any mountains or even foothills, its very flatness earns it the term "_The Neitherlands_" , as it has neither hills nor valleys. It is unkindly said, in fact, that a Sto Kerrigian can suffer altitude sickness just by climbing a flight of stairs. Emmanuelle doubted this, as the Ankh-Morpork Mail Coach rattled on through the flat open country. There were all the windmills, for one thing, which were quite tall structures. The country seemed to have a passion for them, like Djelibeybians and pyramids, as if the people felt it was something _expected _of them.

And then, alternating quite prettily with the green of the cabbages and Sto Helit sprouts**(2)**, there were the enormous splashes of colour represented by the flowers…

"Do you like the tulips, madame?" her fellow passenger inquired, leaning over. He spoke in the slightly sing-song Morporkian of a native Kerrigian speaker.

"They serve to break up the monotony of the cabbage fields." she replied, politely.

"Indeed, Madame. I perceive you are a woman of taste and good sensibility. Let me explain what you are looking at."

"There is really no need…"

Emmanuelle had travelled by coach before. She knew the horror of being cornered by the bore on the coach and having no place to retreat to. Oblivious, the floristry salesman ploughed on.

"These are Grade Five late flowering bulbs, specially bred to prolong the growing season late into November. Did you know we grade all our bulbs from one to five, according to the time of year they come into bloom?"

"Please…"

"And then the next division is the type of the flower. We have the Lily-flowered, the Fringed or Crispa, the Viridiflora, the Rembrandt, the Parrot, the Double-Late, the Kaufmannina, the Fosteriana or Emperor, the Griegii, the Botanical and the Multiflowering."

"I assure you, there is really no need…"

"And we have all the varieties! The early flowering, such as the Single Early Tulips, Double-Kerrigian Early Tulips, Greigii Tulips, The Bellamy Hybrid Tulip, Kaufmanniana Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, the mid-season Hybrid Tulips, Triumph Tulips, Parrot Tulips, the late season flowering:single Late Tulips and Double Late Tulips, such as you see outside the coach window now, and later in the spring, the tropical hot-house varieties successfully adapted by our cousins in Howondaland, the Viridiflora Tulips, Lily-flowering Tulips, Fringed Tulips, Rembrandt Tulips, the Horned Tulip, the Eyed Tulip, the al-Khali Tulip…"

"The Bellamy Hybrid Tulip?"

"Oh yes! Successfully cross-bred as a type in its own right by the gifted Doctor Bellamy of Ankh-Morpork. I have just come from selling her what she requires for her florists' shops. A shocking business some years ago, was it not?**(3) **But becoming an Assassin does not appear to have prevented her from running her shops…"

"What a coincidence!" Emmanuelle said, smiling brightly, and turning back her lapel to reveal her Guild badge. "I know Davinia Bellamy, _mon brave_. She lectures Guild students in Applied Botany. Myself, nothing so intellectual."

She patted her sword hilt.

There was a silence in the coach. Then the fat fussy litle flower-dealer said, thoughtfully, "_The Rijksinstitut van de Tulip_ is currently developing a sustainable black variety." he said. "May I propose _the Black Widow_ as a name for the breed?"

They rolled on in relative silence to the Sto Kerrigian capital, DamHamster**(4)**.

Emmanuelle gratefully got out, graciously accepting a business card from the tulip-salesman and diplomatically evading an offer to meet for dinner. She did not tell him her intentions. She tipped the coachman, as was expected of her, and said she would carry one of her bags (the one with the Assassin equipment in it) and send for the rest, if he would be so kind. Where was there a hotel he could recommend for one of her standing?

She followed his directions, and was soon checking in at an upscale hotel that met her needs for comfort and ease; she noticed she was offered a choice of The Tulip Suite or the Windmill Rooms. She left a request with the reception desk to have her other bags collected from the coach station, and went to settle in. She ignored a vague chattering and scuttling noise in the wainscot. This was, after all, DamHamster. She hummed a song and just hoped they would refrain from going clip, clippety-clop on the stairs all night.

After a while, feeling queasy at the framed iconographs on the wall that celebrated the national produce of Sto Kerrig**(5)**, she decided to go out and follow up at least one useful contact.

Ten minutes' searching took her to the local Guild of Assassins bureau. This was a well-lighted modern office just off the Zuidas, conveniently located for the city's legal, political and financial district. There was a notice in the window, in the Kerrigian language, and the door was locked. Emmanuelle did not speak Kerrigian, but she was fluent in Morporkian and Überwaldean, and understood the Kerrigian language to occupy a halfway-house between the two. Besides, she'd been around Johanna Smith-Rhodes for long enough to have picked up a smattering of useful Vondalaans, the Howondalandian dialect of the language. After some mental puzzling that in other circumstances would have enabled her to complete the Times crossword in a record time, she worked out that it meant _For five minutes closed. In the kaffeehuis opposite we are. _

She looked over the road for the_ kaffeehuis. _Yes, there it was. The smell of good coffee wafted over, together with a strange earthy herbal scent she couldn't quite identify. She felt thirsty, and a little peckish, for some unnaccountable reason. Yes, a coffee would be nice at this time in the afternoon. She smiled, and walked over.

The mingled smells intensified as she walked in. There was a counter, and a blissed out smiling barrista behind the coffee machine. A glass-fronted counter sold cakes, and other substances she could not identify. Tables were dotted about the large room, sparsely attended, and a haze of lazy smoke hung in the air. She spotted the two Assassins instantly, and walked over to join them. They were not so lost in thought as to be unaware; one rose from his chair and said "Emmanuelle?", then extended his hand. She smiled, knowing him: Piers Verlinden, who had been part of her Mature Students' Class. And that was assuredly Guy de Groot, who the Guild had appointed here as local Chief Assassin. The two made way for her. She politely declined one of the local cigarettes – she had heard about what Kerrigians meant about "a good smoke" – and lit one of her favourite Quirmian cheroots.

She passed on fraternal good wishes from the Guild, and politely asked what trade was like here.

"Oh, so so." said deGroot. "We are not especially busy here. The people are too law-abiding, for one thing. We have occasional contracts from lawyers and bankers, and other dangerous people."

"Such as the cheese-makers." added Verlinden. "Never annoy a cheese-maker. There is money in cheese!"

Emmanuelle laughed, appreciatively.

"And how is the lovely and lethal Johanna these days? I hear she is doing well for herself!" added Verlinden. Emmanuelle smiled. Piers and Johanna had had an interesting association during training. For one thing, it was said that peoples who by historical association were of the same ethnicity, but who lived in widely divergent parts of the Disc, were "separated by a common language"**(6)**. This was definitely true of Quirmians and Genuans, although they nominally were related peoples who by historical accident spoke the same language. It also appeared true of Morporkians and Fourecksians. Emmanuelle had witnessed many moments of mutual incomprehension between the Kerrigian Verlinden and the Howondalandian Johanna.

In fact, the witty, gentle and laid-back Verlinden could not have been more shocked, were he to have been a Cro-Magnon man suddenly confronted with a Neanderthal Woman, and told that they were related.**(7)**

"She is doing well, I am happy to say." Emmanuelle assured him. "You have not met her for some years? You will find she has changed. Or rather, Ankh-Morpork has changed her. Which is for the good!"

Then, she explained her reasons for being there. The two local Assassins – _possibly the only permanent presence a quiet backwater place like this requires - _nodded and grasped the essentials.

"We have heard of him." De Groot nodded. "But as so far, his only breaches have been of the criminal law and he has not done anything to come officially to our attention, we have left him be and considered his crimes are for the _Wacht _to deal with."

She nodded. "And the local Watch?"

"Vimes-trained, I'm afraid." said Verlinden. "The local commandant has inherited Vimes' prejudices towards Assassins. Although we still have informal contacts, they cannot be counted on to be helpful."

This was getting more and more common around the Disc now, she reflected, as Vimes trained so many Watchmen for other cities, and _Sammies_ got everywhere. _Eh bien, another limitation to work around. _

The smoky atmosphere was now beginning to get to her head. Verlinden was sent to get more coffees.

"And something to eat, please!" Emmanuelle requested him. The Kerrigian assassin smiled, indulgently.

"That would be a good idea, madame!" he said.

She did not tell them yet that Lord Downey had loaded an additional task on her: to inspect and report back on the operational readiness and efficiency of the Sto Kerrig bureau. Still, she could be generous and overlook a few things, if the local men were helpful on her quest.

"It is entirely possible the man you seek, Balthazar Smith-Rhodes, has gone to ground in this city, not knowing his Gamblers' Guild debt has been paid off". De Groot said, thoughtfully. "After all, we have our old historical and kinship ties with Howondaland. We speak, broadly, the same language. Although Boors do tend to stand out here. They think and act and dress differently. There is a tavern frequented by Boors in the _Strandwardt _area of the city. It was called the Klatchian Head, although they prefer to call it the _Kaffir und Kebab_."

"Perhaps I shall visit there." she mused. "But a problem arises. I will need a guide who speaks the language."

"I can do that…" Verlinden and deGroot said together. She smiled. Men did like to be helpful to her.

"Now he has defrauded and taken advantage of a Guild member" de Groot said, thoughtfully, "and a Guild member is here with a contract, then his business has legally become our business. We will do everything we can to assist, Madame."

She made it back to her hotel, after a brief visit to the Guild office, and spent most of her first evening in DamHamster lying on her bed and thinking strange thoughts whilst trying not to let the top of her head unscrew and float off. Her senses were greatly and painfully enhanced and she fancied the rodents in the walls were clog-dancing up and down wooden stairs.**(8)**

_Mes dieux! What was in that tobacco?_

She was pleased to see the rest of her luggage had caught up with her. However, she did not feel in a fit state to unpack, and drifted off into dreamy thoughts and moods and impressions.

Finally, feeling more herself again, and ravenously hungry, she went down to dinner, knowing she was attracting interest in the dining room, perhaps for being an Assassin, but perhaps also for being herself, a woman who made wives very nervous.

Then she went to Reception.

"Madame?"

"What do people in this city do for entertainment at nights? Or even in the day?" she inquired.

"Well, madame, there is, in the day, the Museum of Cheese on Watergraafsmeer.."

"I think not."

"The Museum of Tulips, on Oudekerk?"

"On reflection, non."

"The Museum of the History of Windmills, on OudeHamstel?"

"Assume my interest in windmills is also limited."

"The interactive Institute of Clog-Making? It is very interesting, they show you how to use the tools and make your own clogs to fit…"

A spirit of mischief hit Emmanuelle.

"I have heard the Walletjes, the _Rosse Buurt_, is a place of interest by night?"

A spasm of embarrassment crossed the receptionist's face.

"Madame might not be interested in the Rosse…" the receptionist was frantically scrabbling through leaflets and pamphlets about tourist attractions in and around Sto Kerrig, red faced and babbling something about _the Seamstresses' Guild, madame…_

"Oh, yes. I have heard that in the Rosse, the Seamstresses like to show off their wares in larger shop windows, so to speak!"

Emmanuelle was about to compound the poor man's misery by conversationally saying _I nearly became a Seamstress myself once…_**(9) **…and then she saw it. A familiar name, in large letters, on a cheaply wood-cut flyer.

"Show me!" she ordered. The receptionist handed it over, glad of the distraction.

There it was, in large distinctive letters, in an otherwise double-Kerrigian block of words.

_Hovondalaand Smith. Balgrogsjager. _

Please translate." she requested. The receptionist snorted.

"Him? He is a fraud, madame. An engaging fraud. But a fraud nonetheless. And anyway, he will be giving his presentation in Kerrigian. Well, in _Vondalaans,_ anyway."

"I have access to interpreters." Emmanuelle said, thinking of deGroot and Verlinden. _If they assist well, I will give a good report to Downey. A favour for a favour. I like them, but for the Bureau here to be run by a pair of slacker stoners… eh bien, they have an opportunity to make amends!_

She took the flyer, noting the receptionist's grudging translation that told her the celebrated and renowned Balgrog hunter was going to make an exciting lecture out of his adventures in the wilderness. All profit from the evening would go to subsidise his next trip out into the wilds. For those who are excited about a chance to invest in the adventure, Silver and Gold investor bonds were available…

His next trip into the wilds of Brindisi and Genua, she thought.

But now she assuredly had her man. And the fun could begin!

She tipped the receptionist.

"One last question, _mon ami_." she said. "Is there a casino in this city?"

* * *

**(1) **_Queen Keliherrena of the Neitherlands, _as she is known in Sto Kerrig.

**(2) **On Roundworld, we would call them** Brussels Sprouts. **

**(3) **Se my fanfic _**Murder Most 'Orrible**_, in which Davinia Bellamy's late-flowering talent for Saying It with Flowers leads her to the Guild of Assassins, who have noted how many bouquets have spelt out _**Drop Dead!**_ Around the city.

**(4) **It's like this. A long-ago Wizard with a bad temper, annoyed there was only that very bland-tasting cheese on the cheeseboard, you know, the one which has a vivid scarlet rind and nobody ever tells you you're not supposed to eat that bit, cursed the city with a plague of gerbils and normally caged rodents. They still breed in the dividing walls to this day. It all makes for a lot of work for the Death of Rats.

**(5) **Tulips, wooden-soled footwear, suspicious neon-yellow coloured egg-based liqeur, and bland-tasting cheese with a bright red outer rind that nobody **_ever_** tells you you aren't supposed to eat.

**(6) **Originally said about the British and the Americans.

**(7) **This is quite a common reaction among Dutch people who are meeting Afrikaaners for the first time. The rather more reserved, pacifistic and racially easy-going Dutch tend to be appalled by their brash, belligerent and non-politically-correct colonial cousins, even though Dutch and Afrikaans are closely related languages and mutually comprehensible. Afrikaaners, for their part, look at the modern Dutch and wonder how the Hell those people could have thrown out the might of imperial Spain, built a massive Empire, declared war on the British and nearly won, and spread their cultural influence everywhere from Northern Ireland to Indonesia.

**(8) **And no doubt singing their good luck and going _**clip-clippety clop**_ on those stairs…

**(9) **See my fanfic _**The Graduation Class **_for Emmanuelle's back-story, which is quite colourful.


	7. A quiet evening

_**The Black Sheep: part Seven. **_

_Sto Kerrig, the Strandvardts Quarter. _

Balthazar Smith-Rhodes drew contentedly on a cigarette. In the background, Sissie thundered, temporarily unheard. Comfortably seated, he allowed her to rant on about how useless he was as a provider, about how he'd picked up and left her to go chasing off to Ankh-Morpork gambling and running after women, and how he could expect to come walking back into her house as if nothing had happened, and why hadn't she listened to her mother warning her about getting involved with not just a white honky, but a _Boor _white honky…

He smiled. Once she'd got it out of her system she'd be herself again. And one of the things he liked about the Mother Country, which was, paradoxically, one of the things his countrymen abominated about it, was how socially _liberal_ it was. Here, nobody gave a stuff about a white man setting up home with a black woman. At home, it had cost him several fines and a couple of jail sentences. And after little Balthazar had arrived to the girl in Natal province, one of his brother's farm labourers, bloody Barbarossa had practically marched him to the dockside with one arm twisted up behind his back. Other people from the richer end of the Smith-Rhodes family had also been there, and he had been issued a one-way ticket on a foul leaking tub of a tramp-ship, a parsimoniously small amount of money, and an ultimatum not to return to Rimwards Howondaland for at least ten years. A shame: Barbarossa, rot him, had seen the advantages of letting his brother use the farm as a base to take rich city people on safari into the veldt. It had worked well at first, his brother taking a generous rent as well as providing accommodation for the _Kaarpies. _But this had put Balthazar on top of a veritable orchard full of forbidden fruit, something he had taken what he thought was discreet advantage of.

But bleck girls are bountiful in more than just physique… the growing pregnancy in one of his field hands had meant his brother had to pay off the girl's family, fend off the Piemburg police who had "had reports", and do something about an embarrassment. Oh, he'd been grudgingly allowed back from exile twelve or thirteen years later, and had, to his surprise, developed a genuine avuncular warmth for his pretty little niece Johanna, who seemed equally taken with him, but that had lasted a mere two or three years before he had to leave the country in another hurry and return to a life of less adventuring and more grift in Ankh-Morpork. It was true he'd been one of the Heroes and Adventurers drawn by the meagre promises the new patrician Vetinari had made concerning that business with the Noble Dragon; but he'd gotten close enough to the thing to think twice about trying to eliminate it. Even though Auntie Roberta was quite a choice piece and had kept her looks well**.(1)**

And then Claude Dibbler had made a Moving Picture about his exploits, which had helped trade enormously. It had also been very flattering: that young lad Victor Marischino had played him, and a suitably horrific and scary Balgrog had been created from Gods-knew where. Although he suspected the boy could not do a Rimwards Howondaland accent for toffee, he had to say**(2)**.

And then they'd played dirty. They'd sent that bleddy lawyer after him, hedn't they, to serve an _injunction_ preventing him from using the Smith-Rhodes femily name. And he'd hed to listen. He'd been up-country in the Paps of Scylla, with a group of mercenaries who were seeking to draw out the last rogue gnolls and _pacify_ the besterds… _Great Offler! Those creatures had scared him. He recalled cowering in fear and thinking there must be an easier way for a man to earn a dollar. Not necessarily a honest one! And that lawyer, one of that bloody zombie Slant's active field agents, had fought his way through the gnolls just to serve him the "cease and desist from mis-using the family name" notice, all wrapped up in legal pink ribbon. It turned out the fellow had been an Assassin, but one who'd discovered the most profitable and fear-inducing use for his talents was to train as a Lawyer…_

"_I will be watching your career with interest", the man had said, seemingly amiably. "By the way, do not place too much trust in Reacher Gilt. You're all expendable to him, and the fewer of you who make it back to the city to be paid off, the better."__**(3)**_

Balthazar had nodded assent. A competent confidence trickster himself, he recognised a ruthless big-league player when he saw one, although he wasn't above doing odd jobs for Gilt as he made his way up. Being a good con-man, he had taken steps to hide his links when Gilt had fallen. Since Vetinari's men had not come for him by night, he rather thought he'd got away with that one. And, sensing trouble, he had politely declined an invitation to work for Cosmo Lavish. He had not liked Cranberry, for one thing, and he had smelt dangerous insanity and self-delusion at fifty paces. He had been better out of that situation too.

But today he was in his modest quarters with Sissie, a woman who billed herself as a Zulu chief's daughter, although it was more likely she'd drifted in from Genua, going by her accent. She dressed in Genuan, rather than Howondalandian, style, for one thing, and he had made it clear on their first meeting that he was not fooled. Although he appreciated her own style of grifting, posing as a Zulu princess to astound and awe the local, even though the nearest she had come to a kraal in Kwa'Zululand had been a visit to the museum of anthropology. He had assisted her in perfecting her own act, teaching her to look and dress the part well enough to con the Kerrigians, and even by teaching her some Zulu, and a sort of marriage had been made in a sort of heaven. He cocked half an ear to the rant - yes, the rush of words was slackening.

"I did pey the rent for a month." Balthazar reminded her. " End there's fifty dollars on the table for you, girl. For myself, if you cook one of your special meals, I'm heppy to hev a quiet night in."

_And tomorrow, raise a couple of hundred dollars more. Hey, they get an evening's entertainment! _

He looked over at Sissie. Wide-hipped and big of bosom, she was a woman a man could _really_ get a hold of. Even his compatriots at the _Keffir on a Kebab _admitted this. Although most of them satisfied their curiosity for black tail by renting it for the hour down at the _Rosse Buurt. _The Seamstresses' Guild did not discriminate racially, and the shrewd Rosie Palm had realised many white men had a strange fascination for black-skinned girls.

She sighed, exasperated, shook her head, and flounced into the kitchen. He picked up his copy of _De Volksrant_ again. Apparently immigrant Igors were straining the apartheid laws back Home. One Igor new in from Ankh-Morpork had apparently performed life-or-death surgery on a white man but had used bodily organs harvested from a black man… while the patient was recovering in hospital, he was so far in a limbo all of his own, while the vexing legal issue of how he should be racially classified was being debated. Calls were being made in parliament for Igors to be refused admission into the Staadt, or else for very clear guidelines to be imposed enforcing them to note the origin of all bodily parts used and to rigorously separate the jars on the shelf according to racial origin.

The newspaper's opinion column also noted that this added to the other set of legal difficulties, concerning the legal status and rights of vampires in Rimwards Howondalandian society.

While it was noted that vampires had been welcomed in because of their willingness to deal with snakebite victims by sucking the blood out (Vampire treatment had a near 100% success rate. Vampires were immune to serpent venom, and considered it gave a whole new savour to human blood), aspects of their craft were giving grounds for concern. Virtually all immigrant vampires were white-skinned. Could they, therefore, be allowed to suck blood from blacks and thus mingle black and white blood? It was noted that the social and historical connotations make blood-sucking perilously near to a sexual act. And therefore an offence under racial segregation law. And what would happen if a white vampire wanted to create a black vampire? This had implications for the well-being of the Rimward Howandalandian Staadt.

Balthazar grinned. He was fairly sure he'd left at least three black-skinned members of the Smith-Rhodes family behind him in Howondaland. Let the family, who he suspected thought a Boor component was beneath them, come to terms with THAT one!

* * *

Emmanuelle made a discreet visit to the local casino. She spent time idly drifting between tables, watching, observing, and sizing up the lie of the land. For the look of the thing, and partly because the old urge was surfacing in her, she made a few modest bets in various games, paying particular attention to the roulette tables. On the third, she saw what she was looking for, a very slight subtle detail that anyone not a professional gambler would have missed. She deftly doubled her initial stake money on a couple of well-chosen numbers, then left the table, not wanting other professionals to draw attention to what she had seen. _In a backwater town like this where laid-back people spend their afternoons in the kaffeehuis smoking exotic tobaccos, they grow careless of the fine detail. This is what I require. But afterwards I will report to Scrote that there are lapses in security here. He will wish to know. _

She then sat in on a _vingt-et-un_ game, and won back the expenses of her hotel room. At least she would not be out of pocket on this trip. And her winnings were being put down to the fact that she was the Black Widow, a lesser legend in the Guild, who had seen fit to grace the Sto Kerrig casino that night. Her reputation was getting her free drinks. _Bon, but a clear head must be kept. It is always advantageous for them to think you are drinking much more than you are. _

The casino manager came bustling over to speak to her, having realised somebody close to the guild council was in his premises. She smiled at him, and wrapped up a hand on twenty points, scooping the pot. _Easy to do when you are counting the cards. But now and again, to lose a hand to another, albeit on the slimmest of margins. And the manager can hardly complain. I am a Guild member and my presence here is drawing others to watch and to gamble. _

"How may I assist, monsieur?" she asked, courteously.

"A private word, madame?"

"_Bien sur_!" she said, rising from the game. Eyes followed her to the manager's office. Inside, he poured two large brandies.

"Mr Jones sent a clacks. He advised me you would be here, and for me to give you all support in a delicate matter."

"Of course. It relates to the fulfilment of an Assassin contract. No, _restez tranquille_. It does not necessarily involve inhumation, and even if it did, I would not conclude it in your premises and adversely affect your trade. I wish to bring the client here and teach him a lesson before we move on. You of course will wish to have the Guild of Assassins as friends and not enemies."

The casino manager considered this. Then he agreed, whole-heartedly. Emmanuelle explained her needs. He considered this.

"You have seen tonight how my presence here has boosted attendance and prompted people to lay bets." she said, seeing him wavering slightly. "And of course I may _lose_ money. There are no guarantees, except that the House always wins in the log run. And whichever way, you will gain, _mon ami_!"

Having won the manager over, she relaxed with the light relief of a few hands of Cripple Mr Onion, at a table that involved a cheesemonger, a tulipgrower, and a fellow Guild member. The game soon became a test of two professional gamblers, although Emmanuelle's superior card-senses won out in the end.

She left the casino at one in the morning, fifteen hundred dollars richer. The bulk of this would be operating capital for the next night.

* * *

**(1) **See Terry Pratchett's _**Guards! Guards!**_

**(2)** See Terry Pratchett's _**Moving Pictures**_

**(3) **In _**Going Postal**_, by Terry Pratchett, there is an odd little aside about how the formerly fear-inducing wild hills of _**Equal Rites**_ are suddenly a lot less hostile and suddenly more empty. The coachmen are puzzled but thankful they don't have wild gnolls to fight any more. One of them says to Moist von Lipwig "We'd be happier if we knew what made them disappear" . This coincides with debased Gnolls entering the city to occupy a position right at the bottom of the food chain, like Reservation Indians after the Apache wars finished in 1890.


	8. Capture!

_**The Black Sheep: part Eight. **_

_DamHamster, Sto Kerrig, the next morning._

Ambassador van Zuiderwijk read through the letter of introduction from the embassy in Ankh-Morpork, and smiled a happy smile. Their conversation, for mutual convenience, was in Quirmian: her first language and, to the ambassador, the international language of diplomacy. And this, in its way, was a diplomatic discussion, between an accredited representative of his country and an agent of a powerful supra-national Guild who was in a position to provide that country with a useful service.

"At last, madame, somebody wishes to rid us of an embarrassment and a nuisance." he said. "The Regent mentioned it when I was last at the Palace. The Burgomeister of this city loses no opportunity to remind me that one of the more notorious confidence tricksters operating in this country is in fact a Howondolandian. His sub-text is always _what do I propose to do about it?"_

The Ambassador sighed and spread his hands**(1)**. Being Rimwards Howondaland's ambassador to Sto Kerrig was regarded as a prestigious sinecure in the Diplomatic Service. Normally a country of this size would only merit a part-time Consul. But the historical and ethnic ties between Sto Kerrig and Howondaland called for the presence of a full-blown Embassy, for symbolic and historical reasons. In consequence, it wasn't exactly an overworked Embassy, serving as it did a small expat community in a nominally very friendly country that most Boors still sentimentally regarded as _The Motherland. _Even allowing for the divergence of the ways between the people of The Motherland and the descendents of that surplus population which, several hundred years before, had taken the emigrant call to faraway Howondaland, relations could be surprisingly cordial. Ambassador van Zuiderwijk regularly ate with the Burgomeister and was a frequent guest of the Prince Regent, who nominally ruled Sto Kerrig on behalf of faraway Queen Kelireherra in Sto Helit.

It was an idyllic posting for a competent but slightly lazy diplomat. Very little could cloud the skies of such a solid international relationship, but Balthazar Smith-Rhodes was a thundercloud all of his own.

"Happily, excellency, I am here and I have ideas as to how this person may be at least shown the road to reform." Emmanuelle said. "I will be making the detention later today. Have I your assurance that you will support me in this endeavour, should there be any objection from the civil Watch?"

"As Pieter van der Graaf is intent on gaining our government's official support for this, I do not see how I can say no!" the ambassador replied. "You are of course aware that while we are all equals and peers, the convention is that as Ankh-Morpork is the most important diplomatic posting, the ambassador there is the most senior and he may then make decisions that bind the rest of us? Although his instructions are politely phased as _recommendations_ and usually come with a précis of reasons as to why it should be so. The only other Embassy of similar Disc importance is in Klatch, of course. Here in Sto Kerrig, we come quite a long way down the list in terms of strategic or trading importance, and we can afford to take a more relaxed view. But I do agree with him that this national embarrassment has been allowed free rein for too long and requires a solution. I understand, however, you are _not_ inhuming?"

"No, Excellency. The conditions of the contract are that I detain and restrain, and retrieve goods or cash to a certain value. It is an accepted Guild assignment under international law, after all**(2)**. I am concerned that the local Watch may attempt to impede me. Have you any influence? I would prefer to get past such an _impasse_ without bloodshed."

"I have a little influence with Captain van der Valk of the Wacht**(3)**. I am sure he will accept that if the punishment for the gentleman's misdeeds is appropriate – and I believe it is – and that he will be moving on shortly, as you propose, then he may be persuaded to leave it in the hands of your Guild."

"_Très bien._ And the other things we discussed?"

"Have been prepared for you, madame. I must say that as our man has again aroused the ire of the Smith-Rhodes family, it is perhaps best and most humane if he is detained now. Which only leaves his common-law _wife_, but her transgressions are an embarrassment for our neighbours at the Kwa'Zulu Legation to deal with. Officially speaking, she is not my responsibility!"

The ambassador smiled a beatific smile at the thought of sublime diplomatic embarrassment to the Kwa'Zulu, with a bogus Paramount Princess grifting her way through Sto Kerrigian high society. He had heard her last scam had been a bogus fundraiser for a hospital for poor black children.**(4)** The Sto Kerrigians, a nation suffering guilt for what it had sent to Howondaland all those years ago**(5)**, had atoned generously.

Emmanuelle smiled, another nail having been placed in the coffin that would restrain Uncle Balthazar. This was turning into quite a nice working holiday.

With time to inhume before going in for the kill, Emmanuelle walked around DamHamster, discovering the Museum of Cheese to be as bland and dry as the cheese it celebrated. On the point of tossing a coin as to whether to do clogs, tulips or windmills next – although an hour in a _kaffeehuis _was beginning to be an appealing alternative – she saw it.

_De Astoriastempel._

Partly Temple to the Goddess of Love, but in the general laid-back Sto Kerrigian manner, it also advertised _De Sexmuseum._ **(6)**

This was too much; she _had_ to go in. She speedily got through the actual temple part, which she noted was co-dedicated to Petunia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection. (Although she left a quick prayer and a small donation, as a keen amateur worshipper of Astoria and one who very nearly became a Petunian).

The museum itself was all she could have hoped for, and it left her in great gusts of laughter punctuated by periods of quiet wondering. _Could I get away with bringing a School trip here? Ma foi, we are expected to teach young Assassins to be cosmopolitan people, after all… maybe if I suggest to Lord Downey and Lady T'Malia that a few days here would have great scholastic and educative value, here in the old city of DamHamster…_

She returned to one of the more _optimistic_ exhibits, and laughed again. _Can I get postcards? And would Miss Maccalariat allow the Post Office to deliver them? And why do men have to exaggerate so? I have told girls who are old enough to appreciate the joke that men have a specially calibrated tape measure to calculate their most intimate size. On this tape measure, a normal inch stretches to an inch and a half. C'est la vie, mes amies! _

She paused to study an exhibit of fine Agatean screen-art. The caption said it had originally hung in a geisha house in HungHung City. Emmanuelle did not doubt it.

Later in the day she discovered you could indeed buy postcards. She smiled, and spent a pleasant afternoon at a pavement table outside a _kaffiehuis _filling them in, accepting that if they went anywhere near Miss Maccalariat, that was about as far as they would _ever_ go. It would be worth it just for the look on her face, she decided.

At four o'clock, she went to find the local Assassins for a final mission briefing. On the face of it, it was a simple job: but once you started thinking that, you were getting _overconfident._ And the client routinely went armed, and as a younger man had demonstrated an ability to be able to use those weapons, until his nerve had broken. What she wanted to prevent was a sudden resurgence of his weapon skills, faced with three Assassins. And she _feared_ one of those weapons, in the hands of a Howondalandian. She had once seen it used in earnest. _That _had been a lesson.

* * *

Balthazar Smith Rhodes nodded happily from the wings. The Church Hall of the Temple of Anoia (DamHamster parish) was rapidly filling with happily excited Kerrigians. He smiled again. He had rented the Anoian chuech hall for several reasons: firstly, the fact the resident priestess was new, naïve, and easily taken in by apparent honesty and sincerity. He knew back in the big city, Bishop Extremelia would have spotted a scam within ten seconds and pointed very meaningfully at the door. Her early experience as a barmaid and bookie's cashier had led Balthazar into contact with her several times, and he knew he could wheedle no credit out of her at either establishment. Secondly, the bishop's early experience as a Gambler's Guild member had led her to orientate Church social activities towards low-level betting and gambling, in accordance with the Church dogma _It could be You!_ Anoism was fast becoming the Guild religion of choice, and the benign gambling regime assured the Goddess and her priestesses of a nice little earner in perpetuity. It attracted people willing to take risks with their money, although Extremelia Mume made it an article of faith to look after her flock and to dissuade them from betting more than they could afford to lose.

And people willing to make a risky bet are exactly what I need right now, Balthazar thought, as he watched Sissy setting up the iconograph projector. Part of the scam was that she posed as his Black Howondalandian maid, a status that usually made people feel sorry for her and discreetly slip her money to "help out". And _ag,_ it was _expected _of a Boor to be off-hand to his bleck housegirl. If she was lucky. And just now and again he loved playing the baas-fella, knowing she had to be humble and not bleddy well enswer beck. She'd give him Hell for it later, mind you.

He frowned at the two late arrivals, who were in Assassin black. They took their seats peaceably enough, and he recognised one of them as deGroot, the local section head and _hanfkopf,_ but the woman troubled him. She was exotic-looking, with long black hair piled up and netted in the fashionable style. Something about her face suggested Toleda, perhaps, the crazy bull-fighting country. And both were visibly armed, although that was usual for Assassins. He wondered if Johanna had been annoyed at being manipulated into paying his Guild dues. _Ag, she's got at least a hundred grand in the bank! It's a drop in the ocean, to her. She'll see sense and forgive her old uncle. And she'd have come here herself, anyway. That would be her way. No, this new woman is just a coincidence. De Groot fancies himself as a ladies' man. But why has he brought her here? _

Balthazar Smith-Rhodes found himself reviewing his emergency exit plan_. _

_Leave the night's takings for Sissy. She'll look after the money for me. Escape into the street behind through the side door. Fast horse waiting. I still have most of Johanna's five hundred. Next stop, Brindisi._

He frowned, then laughed, as two more people, obvious Watchmen, entered the hall and took station by the door.

_The least of my worries. Korporaal Knoppel and his sidekick Sergeant Dubbelepunt. The least competent policemen in this country, by several miles. If I cannot out-think and evade them, I am losing my touch. The esteemed Captain van der Valk and his more able men must be dealing with an outbreak of serious crime, like tulip-rusting or cheese theft. _

He waited a little while longer, then nodded to Sissy, and began his presentation.

Emmanuelle sat and listened intently to what she recognised as a sales pitch, although it was conducted in Kerrigian, a language she did not speak. She knew that Balthazar was focusing his attention on her and de Groot, the Assassins he could see, and that it slightly un-nerved him. _Eh bien. He watches the assassins he can see, but knows nothing of the one he cannot. Verlinden is at the back of the building, watching the exit door. He has been primed to move in quickly and get inside the reach of the whip. I am counting on age, lack of practice and slow reactions. In his day he might have been as proficient as Johanna, but he is older and slower. If Verlinden rushes him, or moves to grappling distance unseen, the whip is useless. And that machete must be as blunt as it is rusty. _

The two policemen were an inconvenience, assuredly, but when you looked closer, one was a fat slow old sergeant trying to get to retirement age in one piece, and the other was a wizened little corporal with a cigarette butt, of whatever nameless tobacco, stuck behind one unspeakable _oreille. _She wondered if those two were a universal phenomena the Disc over, and whether, for instance, the Kwa'Zulu Royal Kraal Thief-Takers also had a fat elderly sergeant and a shrivelled dirty _singe_ of a corporal who teamed up together and sloped off round the back of a long-hut for a sly smoke whenever they could. The thought made her giggle, and with an effort she dragged her mind back to the flood of Kerrigian.

_In Ankh-Morpork, there are two terms for an utterly intelligible foreign language. Some say "It's all Ephebian to me!" and others refer to "that's double-Kerrigian if ever I heard it, squire." Zut alors, I cannot speak for Ephebian, but this is most assuredly double-Kerrigian, quite literally so! _

She let the words wash over her, listening to de Groot's whispered running translation into Morporkian. Sometimes it sounded like the strongly accented Morporkian the farmers and peasants spoke, out in the accursed countryside between Morpork and the Stos. The rise and fall and the intonation was so like that of the Farmers' Guild leader Dan Archer, and his colleague Walter Gabriel. Sometimes, to her surprise, words, even whole phrases, sounded so like Morporkian that she did not need a translation; sometimes the ghost of a meaning, bare bones of intelligibility, rose up on the edge of comprehension.**(7)**

And it was punctuated by iconograph slides, which the stately black woman was feeding into the machine in a bored and disinterested way, as if she'd done it a thousand times before. Emmanuelle frowned. Something didn't fit. She was dressed too well and too brightly to be a Black Howondalandian. She knew the Boors liked their servants to dress drab and plain. And besides, golden earrings? **(8)**8What black Howondalandian maid earned enough for _those_? And that mode of dress was surely Genuan, she'd seen the way Genuan blacks chose to dress… and while she'd just said "_Ja, baas-man_" in response to a jokey reproof, she didn't lower her eyes submissively… if anything she's glaring at him as if she wants to tear his head off.

_And those slides! How in the name of a thousand Gods can anyone by taken in by those? Mes dieux, that is assuredly a troll, spray-painted black, with a burning torch in one hand and a whip in the other. Those wings are glued to its back…_

"The moving pictures, madame" de Groot whispered. "There was one called _Howondaland Smith and the Hunt for the Balgrog._ Those are still iconographs from the clicks that escaped Patrician Vetinari's orders to round up and destroy everything. We can perhaps arrest him, legitimately, for possession of those!"

"Dibbler had a lot to do with the clicks, did he not?" she inquired, prodded by a memory of something she had read.

"He produced that one, madame. He and Smith-Rhodes are known to each other."

"Why does it not surprise me?" she said, as the sales talk grew to a climax and a collection box began to circulate. She noted the stolid Sto Kerrigians were not slow at putting money into it, and despaired at the credulity of mankind.

And then things started to happen. The fat police sergeant walked down the aisle of the hall and called something in Kerrigian. De Groot slipped out into the aisle and whispered in his ear. The sergeant jumped. Emmanuelle noted how the black woman exploited the moment of confusion to whip the cash-box out of sight. She winked at the woman. If this was Balthazar's put-upon leman, then she had no quarrel with her and as far as she, Enmmanuelle, was concerned, the money was hers in compensation for the no doubt appalling way he treated her. She said, in Quirmian, knowing a Genuan woman would understand,

"It is best if you leave, I think. Such a shame you leave empty handed, as the policemen must already have impounded the money."

The woman grinned back, good white teeth in a black face, knowing Emmanuelle had seen her spirit the cash away.

"_Ouaih. Quel dommage_!" she agreed, in a strong Genuan creole Quirmian. "_Mais c'est la vie. _Are you here for _him_? Better hurry, honey. He's slippery as a three-banded coit!" She jerked a thumb towards the stage, where Balthazar was running for the wings. He disappeared behind a curtain.

"Have no fear." Emmanuelle assured her. "You _do_ know we are arresting him?"

"You're an Assassin, baby. Do what you gotta do. I've got the house and my own money. Next time I choose a man, I choose slower and I choose better!"

Balthazar Smith-Rhodes reappeared on the stage, backing off slowly, hands raised and an Assassin's sword at his throat, as Piers Verlinden steered him back in.

"I'd better help." Emmanuelle said, liking the black woman, who was proving as ruthless as she was.

"And I'd better go." Sissy agreed. "Nice talking to you, sister!" She left the iconogaph projector - Emmanuelle doubted she'd need it again - and inobtrusively vanished towards the nearest exit.

Emmanuelle walked to the stage, through a milling mass of confused people who were looking to the two policemen for leadership.. She approached Balthazar and lifted the coiled whip from his belt, then relieved him of his machete and dagger.

"Balthazar Smith-Rhodes, in the name of the Guild of Assassins of Ankh-Morpork, I am taking you into custody and placing you under formal notice of distraint to the sum of three thousand, six hundred and forty-two Ankh-Morporkian dollars." she said. "You will have the kindness not to struggle nor to seek to escape, as my associates will then, most regrettably, be forced to use techniques of restraint which are both painful and degrading. Do we understand each other? _Eh bien_!"

She remembered.

"As Senior Assassin here, I am asking you, Mr de Groot, to go and secure that picture-box and those iconograph slides which we may need to use as evidence. Thank you. Then I suggest we leave discreetly, and let those two good policemen pacify the crowd who are demanding their money back. _Alors_, they may not be able to locate the money, but searching for it will keep them busy! Now let us leave – by the back door, if you please – as we have a full and interesting evening ahead."

Balthazar sighed. At least they weren't planning to inhume him yet… maybe an escape opportunity would present itself. He looked at the calm and capable woman Assassin who seemed to be running things – Quirmian, he now realised, not Toledan – and wondered if Johanna really had sent her. Or does the Guild automatically avenge a perceived insult to one if its own? _Ag, _these are stroeppy people!

He went along quietly, There didn't really seem to be an alternative. Yet.

* * *

**(1) **Because speaking Quirmian forces certain body language to be _completement d'accord_ with what's coming out of _la bouche_, c'est pourquoi.

2 **(2) **As will become clear shortly, Emmanuelle is acting as what would, in the United States, be called a "bounty hunter" – a class of self-employed law ernforcers who are allowed to go about their business according to State and Fedeeral law, and who are thought of by local police departments and Sheriff's offices as either a total godamn nuisance, or as a valuable adjunct to the forces of law and order.

**(3) **In the 2010's, Britain's _foreign, but not-American, TV law enforcer of choice_ is a gloomy Swede called Wallander, who polices the picturesque sleepy-ish town of Ystad. Back in the 1970's, the cult European TV cop, in an exotic foreign place where they do things differently in a picturesque Continental setting, was Captain van der Valk, who policed Amsterdam. For some reason, TV cop shows set in France and Germany haven't really taken off at all (apart from Inpsector Clouseau) despite their best being rather quite good.

**(4) **To be fair, _some _money had found its way to Howondaland. Sissy had been sure to take her legitimate expenses first, though. In many ways, she and Balthazar were a well-suited couple. Having no illusions about Balthazar, she understated her earnings and kept no significant amounts of loose money about the house.

**(5) **For eg, the Boor peoples**. **

**(6) **In Roundworld's Amsterdam, there really _is _a Sex Museum, also known as the Venus Temple. It is an eye-opener in every sense.

**(7) **tune into a Dutch-language radio station. Don't worry about understanding, just let the words and the cadences wash over you. I can guarantee that it will soon sound like a conversation between two Norfolk or Suffolk farm labourers – (natives, that is, and not the Portuguese guest workers who appear to be taking over). And you'll soon experience the Dutch language much as I've ascribed it to Emmanuelle.

**(8)** OK, subtle punning reference to one of Holland's best-known rock bands… then again, I gave Johanna's more respectable uncle the name "Van Der Graaf" for the same reason… he's generated quite a few good story-lines!


	9. Reparations

_**The Black Sheep: part Nine. **_

_Teaching a lesson. _

_DamHamster, Sto Kerrig. _

Three Assassins and a downcast fourth returned, for the moment, to Emmanuelle's hotel suite. She commanded Room Service to send up ample food for four, and the three conferred on the next stage of their plan of action. Balthazar Smith-Rhodes asked if he could at least be allowed to return home, under escort, of course, to collect things which were of sentimental value to him.

She considered this.

"Non." she said, flatly. Balthazar sighed. Quirmian people, in his experience, were _good _at articulating that word**(1)**. "Those policemen were sent to arrest you for fraud and deception. By now they will be at your home searching for evidence. You may count any money, or _other_ items you hold dear, as being lost to you."

Because she was, at heart, if not _kind_, then at least not gratuitously cruel, Emmanuelle did not add "your woman, I think, is also lost to you." But it was there, hovering, carefully not said.

"We took a risk in bringing you here. If the local _gendarmes_ are any good, they will have noted a strange Assassin in town and may be watching her movements. Still, we will not be here for very long. Piers?"

"Perhaps I should go and check the client's home, just to be sure? If the _Wacht _are there, they will be very obvious."

"_Bon idée_. Please go." she agreed. He nodded, and departed.

"What happens now?" inquired Guy deGroot.

"I think we eat and drink at our leisure, saving something for Piers, when he returns. Then, _mes amis_, I owe you something for your support of this operation. We are all going for an evening at the Casino! Won't that be nice!"

"All?" de Groot asked, nodding at Balthazar.

"But _of course_. Leaving him behind would be impolite. We are assuredly not impolite people!"

Balthazar looked up, wondering if this was some sort of way of prolonging the wait and the cruelty before the dark and ruthless woman decided to dispose of him. He shrugged. One last night in the casino… and he had remembered what old Gamblers' Guild hands had said, with awe, about a mysterious Quirmian woman known in Guild circles as _The Black Widow_. Whoever she was, he felt he was about to be honoured by an evening of gambling with her. Something to tell the grandchildren… no, perhaps not. He reached for the plate of canapés, which were really quite good.

* * *

Piers Verlinden watched, cloaked and anonymous, as the _Wacht _swarmed over the shabby rented house on the canal bank. In the older parts of the City, a past Burgomeister had once tried to maximise city taxation by basing it on the maximum ground area occupied by a building: the larger the floor plan, the higher the tax. A Vetinari could have told him what was going to happen next: people gave up their gardens, and buildings were suddenly based on the smallest possible plots of land. And what used to be build _along_ was now built _up_, over seven or eight floors of comparatively small rooms. To a people used to the civil engineering problems of building tall thin windmills, this was not a difficult problem. Thus the canals, which ran through the city as part of the complex system of irrigation that brought water to the tulip and cabbage fields, were lined by vertigo-inducing top-heavy buildings that, nevertheless, had a certain charm to them.

Smith-Rhodes and his woman had lived in a three-floor flat in one such building. Verlinden could see that with so many Wachtmen swarming all over the place, there was no way even an Assassin could get in and out uninvited. And van der Valk himself was there, fuming over his _meerschaum_ pipe and making life Hell for Knoppel and Dobblepunt, the two coppers who had fouled up the arrest at the Anoian temple and allowed the Assassins to get in and out without anyone noticing. It did not seem to be doing van der Valk's temper any good to see the woman had also flown the coop.

_"Hey! You!"_

A voice from the shrubbery. Without turning his head towards it and drawing attention, he said "I'm listening."

"Step over this way. You were one of the three, weren't you? Took that no-good man away earlier. I been waiting for you. Is he still alive?"

He recognised the client's woman, the black Genuan.

"Have no fear, frau!" he said, cheerfully. "He is being well-treated."

"I'm pleased to hear that. Listen. I got in and out before the police did. I got the money, so tell him there ain't no point his going back looking for it." She paused, and in a softer voice added "Tell him it was good. Well, _most_ of it was good. But I'm leaving town. There's a bag here I packed some of his things in. I wasn't leaving them for no copper! Will you take it to him? That and his crossbow?"

"Assuredly, frau!" he said. Although the mention of _crossbow _had made him reflexively loosen the sword in its scabbard. He didn't _think _she was pointing it at him. But you had to be sure…

He was relieved to see a genially smiling black-skinned woman who was indeed holding a crossbow out to him, but stock-first. She passed this over along with a large valise.

"Gotta go. Tell the Black Widow I like her style and I owe her a big Cajun dinner. If I see her in Genua or anywhere else, we is _eatin'_ together!"

She saluted him, Verlinden reciprocated, and they departed in opposite directions. Un-noticed by the police, he headed back to the hotel. He alowed her the courtesy of not loking to see which way she chose to go.

* * *

"Well, she et least hed the kindness." Balthazar sighed, riffing through the contents of the bag, "More than I deserve." He drew out a large brown envelope, and a long smile spread across his face.

"Femily iconogrephs." he said. "Efter I wes kicked out of Howondaland for the second time, Agnetha was kind enough to send me pictures. Of the femily. Of her children, es they were growing up!"

"Agnetha." Emmanuelle mused. "That is Johanna's mother's name, is it not?"

Then a long slow smile spread across her face too, as she realised the implications. Piers Verlinden, who had once likened training alongside Johanna as like being in a room with a bad-tempered leopardess, also smiled a long delighted smile.

"We cannot." Emmanuelle said, regretfully. "It would not be ethical."

"Alas" sighed Verlinden. "A shame, as we have a little time to kill."

"There are some very good ones of my niece, aged four or five." Balthazar offered. "She was a _very_ sweet little girl."

"I wonder what happened since?" mused Verlinden. His time training with Johanna had not been happy.

There was a reflective pause. Then, as one, the two Assassins reached for the envelope, trying hard not to grin.

"If this is evidence, we must evaluate it." she said.

* * *

They arrived at the Casino shortly before nine. As she had suspected, her presence caused a stir, and all eyes followed the passage of the notorious Black Widow, around whom so many stories had been told, and to whom so much notoriety attached. Emmanuelle felt vaguely gratified by this. Especially since her presence in town appeared to have drawn a larger betting crowd to the casino than might have been expected for a weeknight, at this otherwise dead post-Hogswatch time of year.

Guy deGroot and Piers Verlinden were happy enough to be there, especially after Emmanuelle had graciously said that to thank them for their help, she would underwrite their betting. She set aside a portion of her winnings from the previous night for this. Besides, they were keen to watch an expert at work and learn from her.

The Casino management welcomed Assassins; known to be generous betters who took their losses philosophically. But tonight, she planned something different and the part of her mind that logically calculated the odds and assessed risk was working overtime. Balthazar Smith-Rhodes, who knew he was doomed and there was nowhere to run to, accepted his state resignedly. At least he was going out in a blaze of glory with one last run at the card-tables. It could have ended worse…

"_Eh bien!" _she said, arriving at the roulette wheel she had taken note of the previous night. We watch for a little while, I think. Then we begin! Mister Smith-Rhodes, you will not make any bets until you are instructed. Let us, for now, observe!"

She watched it over six or seven spins of the wheel, reassuring herself affairs were still as they had been the previous night. It would not have done were the management to have spotted the same little peculiarity and to have rectified it during the day. But no, it was still there…

Emmanuelle advanced thirty dollars worth of chips.

"_Orphèlins_, dix-sept, trente-quatre, et six, s'il tu plâit! " she directed the croupier.

"Oui, madame" she confirmed, as the chips went to the appropriate boxes on the green beize layout.

They stood back.

"Regardez!" she directed her associates.

_Orphèlins_ was one of the classic divisions of the Quirmian roulette wheel. There were two sets of "orphans" on the Wheel: the Turnwise and Widdershins sets. These were the two spaces left over after the primary divisions: the _Voisins du zéro, _the number group surrounding the house zero, and the opposing group of the _Tiers du Cylindre. _These were respectively referred to as Hubwards and Rimwards.

Emmanuelle had just made a very specific three-number spread bet against the three numbers of the Turnwise group. If the ball fell in any one of these, it meant her ten-dollar bet became three hundred and eighty, a three hundred and sixty dollar profit.

She waited while other bets were laid, and then the croupier placed the dolly.

"_Rien na va plus!"_

There was the comforting clicking rattle as the ball was set into motion, spinning in the opposite direction to the wheel. Emmanuelle smiled. This was life, this was excitement, this was vitality. This was _living._ Life didn't get any better than this. She lit a cheroot and calmly watched the wheel.

"_rouge, trente-quatre!"_

It was Emmanuelle's number. There was applause and admiration – this is what the onlookers had come to see – and she directed the croupier to sweep her winnings towards her. She set aside the bulk of the won cash, and stepped up her bet to twenty dollars on each of four spots.

"_Voisins. Trente-deux et le trois au courant!"_

Betting on thirty-two, fifteen, nineteen and four, this time. Again she stood back, and, cupping the elbow of her smoking arm in the palm of the other, watched the wheel dispassionately.**(2)** The ball span and faltered and looked for an instant as if it was going to drop into the zero, the house number. In which case all bets were off, and the house took everything. But as the crowd round the table stared and gasped, a last little wobble dropped the silver ball into thirty-two. Emmanuelle's pot again. This time, seven hundred and sixty dollars. In just two spins of the wheel she was over a thousand dollars better off. This time, she took her money and declined a further bet. She looked, with amused tolerance, on the number of people betting on thirty-four and thirty-two, or just generally on red, as if they believed that somehow the Black Widow had made them into lu…_touched…_ numbers.

"How did you do that?" demanded Balthazar, looking on her with new respect. "It could only be..mmph!"

She had placed her hand to his mouth.

"Not _that_ name, not here!" she demanded. "You should know better!"

She had once taken Johanna to a casino, intending to expand the other woman's mind and round her off with at least a veneer of sophistication. She had had a _chienne_ of a night, barely breaking even. Other gamblers around them had not done much better, and the focal point of peoples' indifferent luck had been Johanna, even though the Howondalandian girl had enjoyed beginners' l-word, and had come out six hundred dollars ahead. Veteran gambler Doc Pseudopolis had been present: he had had a quiet word to Emmanuelle. _Er… nothing personal, Emmie. That friend of yours. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice girl and everything, and I stress nothing personal, but what the heck are you doing bringing a woman into the Guild who's got red hair AND GREEN EYES? Does that not suggest something to you, something you don't draw attention to in a place like this?"_

Emmanuelle had reddened and apologised. It was perfectly true. Red haired and green-eyed women were too uncomfortably like the personification of the L… even if it was only psychological; no wonder people were having a bad night. She had made an excuse, and suggested to Johanna that perhaps now was right for a supper and a drink somewhere, hmm? I am not having the best of nights, and you will assuredly lose it all again.

Johanna had agreed to quit while she was ahead, and they had moved on. Emmanuelle had suspected she wasn't really interested and was only there to humour a friend. But you did not. Mention Her. Nor even think about Her. While gambling. She had also suspected Johanna was perfectly aware of a certain resemblance to… (she resisted any but the vaguest thought of other green-eyed redheads) .the form a certain Person takes in the world, .and had taken a minx-like delight in innocently stirring things up as she moved through the casino._ Not of course that she would ever admit it. And I saw only my unsophisticated colonial friend Johanna, who urgently needed to learn social skills invaluable to the Assassin. _

She smiled at the memory, and cleared her head.

"Now, _mes amis_, might be a good time to make small bets on Black. Just a suggestion, you understand." she said.

She watched, impassively, as deGroot, Verlinden and the client all selected cautious small bets on Black. She was impressed: all three won necessarily smaller sums, Balthazar Smith-Rhodes doing best with a second bet on the black number being even.

"How much?" she demanded.

"Seventy-three dollars." he said.

She smiled, and patted him on the shoulder.

"_Et bon_! As you are betting with money rightly belonging to your niece Johanna, it is ethically and legally correct that all your winnings also belong to her."

She watched his face as the implications set in. She patted his shoulder.

"And tonight, _mon ami,_ you get to enjoy yourself. Under my tutelage, you will surely win back the money which rightly belongs to another. Isn't that nice? I now make your debt to Johanna, _à propos de rien, _three thousand five hundred and sixty-nine dollars. We have a lot to make up!"

They made the occasional small bet, slowly and steadily winning more than they lost, until Emmanuelle judged the time was again right. She nudged Balthazar.

"Make, if you please, the following bet. "_Orphèlins_, Turnwise. As I did before. But fifty dollars each on… thirty-four and six. _Allez!"_

The next few minutes were eternity. Balthazar could not watch.

"Have faith!" she whispered to him. "Be stern!"

And then the ball dropped into the slot.

"Red, thirty-four." the croupier said, dispassionately.

Balthazar was suddenly, and he realised temporarily, nineteen hundred dollars richer.

"_Bien accompli!_ Your debt is now one thousand six hundred and sixty-nine dollars. On the next turn of the wheel, you will bet voisins de zero. I think… thirty dollars each, on these five numbers. Allez!"

Balthazar's knees buckled when the bet pulled off again. One thousand one hundred and forty dollars.

"Five hundred and twenty-nine dollars to go, I perceive." Emmanuelle said, kindly. "How are you faring, _mes amis_?"

Both the other Assassins smiled, happily. Both were a steady several hundred dollars up.

Emmanuelle smiled. They were good pupils and were learning fast. Under her guidance, they returned to side bets again, and slowly accumulated more money in a series of careful small bets by the usual choices of colour, even-or-odds, and by thirds.

Then Emmanuelle told Balthazar to play by hundred dollar bets on _voisins._

"I begin to perceive now, Madame. A sequence?" deGroot discreetly whispered. She nodded. "Just watch."

And Balthazar's number came up. Three thousand eight hundred dollars. Taking her party to the casino bar, Emmanuelle was first to kiss him on both cheeks.

"Your debt is discharged, mon brave." she said. "As Johanna is a generous woman and a dutiful niece, you now have paid what you owe to her and you have an excess of slightly over three thousand dollars to your name. I know she will not begrudge it to you. I will take it into custody for the moment, but on my honour as an Assassin, you will receive it back. Spend it wisely."

"Does this mean you're letting me go?" he asked, hope returning. Emmanuelle smiled beatifically.

"On the dockside at Brindisi I let you go, _mon brave!_." she said. "You will perhaps need that money where you are going. I have in my travelling valise letters of authority from Ambassador van der Graaf in Ankh-Morpork, and from Ambassador van Zuiderwijk here in DamHamster. You will receive travelling documents and a temporary visa from the Embassy here, together with a ticket to travel by ship from Brindisi to Rimwards Howondaland, where you will be received into the warm embrace of your native country and your family."

He crumpled slightly. She spoke, kindly.

"Be reasonable, _mon brave_. There is no longer anything for you on this continent. The days of the hero and the adventurer ended with the passing of Cohen. There is a diminishing number of elderly former heroes in Ankh-Morpork who meet for mutual comfort, wistful nostalgia about old times, and to exchange remedies for arthritis. No longer adventurers in the uncharted wild, they now perform such manual jobs for poor pay, that are within the capacity of an elderly person. Conina Harebut does their hair at reduced rates for the elderly because she feels sorry for them, old ladies who have outlived their time. Even the Mended Drum has outgrown you, and you are no longer as welcome in there as you were even thirty years ago. The world has become too small and too civilised. Patrician Vetinari privately considers you to be an anachronism and an embarrassment in his modern age. Every year the winter is colder and wetter and you think of Natal and the Transvaal of your youth with nostalgia, where it is always warm and sunny. And now even your woman has left you."

Emmanuelle looked at him, compassionately.

"One day I will not be as young as I was and I may have to think of retiring as an Assassin." she said. "Even in my profession I see old men whose pride does not let them retire, not until Death or humiliating failure force the issue. Regard Mr Wiggs, who in his sixties went for one last inhumation contract so as to make a name and retire on. He chose Commander Vimes of the Watch, who was considerate to an old man, and merely broke his legs. Today he props up a bad leg and drinks port and lives vicariously on the growing fame of his sons and daughter, alll of whom are Assassins who carry on the Wiggs family name. But he still wishes he were active in the profession as he drinks himself to gout. So do not think I have not considered these things, nor that I lack compassion for you. But all that remains here is to sponge money from friends and family until, with exasperation and anger, they wash their hands of you. And one cold winter's day, much like today, you snatch a rattling last breath , and the flowers bloom like madness in the following spring over a pauper's grave**(3) **where you lie forgotten, a long way from Home and family. This is no end for a hero. And you were a Hero once, one of a band of the brave and bold, before you took to fraud. _Helas_, the age of the Hero is over.

"At least at home, a statute of limitation applies and Ambassador van der Graaf assures me you will not be pursued for old crimes. By the time you arrive, your brother Andreas, known as Barbarossa, will have received letters advising him of your return. He will be angry, but I understand him to be a man of honour who will find some position for you in your declining years. All that remains is that I escort you to Brindisi in the fast coach leaving tomorrow morning, and see you on the ship when it leaves. Then my duty is done and you will be returning home in comfort. Which may perhaps be more than you deserve.

"Now shall we cash in our chips and go and seek a palatable meal for four? And I will tell you the secret of tonight."

* * *

**(1) **Reference General de Gaulle. This was his favourite word in dealing with inconveniently not-French people.

**(2) **This is a habit universally shared by tough women who smoke. Terry was bang on the money to attribute it to Adora Belle Dearheart. But she's not the only one.

**(3) **Yes. These soliloquies _do_ take on a lie of their own and made me quote Jethro Tull's _**Aqualung,**_ about the lonely death of a tramp. It felt right. Blame it on the Meme Game.


	10. Epilogues

_**The Black Sheep: Epilogues **_

It had taken three days and a change of coach to get from Sto Kerrig to Brindisi. Emmanuelle had assured herself of Balthazar's compliance by impounding the money he had legitimately won for himself in the casino, making it clear he had to get past her if he planned to steal it back and then vanish into the countryside. Besides, she also carried the brown envelope of family iconographs that she guessed were of irreplaceable sentimental value to the old grafter. This too was a guarantee of his co-operation. Specially since she had continued his education in gambling sensibly and responsibly, to pass the time on the journey.

Especially since she had explained exactly how they had been able to take the Sto Kerrig casino for so much, nearly ten thousand dollars between the four of them, with such seeming lack of effort.

It had been down to observation, intelligent guesswork, a dash of intuition, and…

"When not maintained properly, _mon brave_, a roulette wheel loses its perfect balance. It goes off true centre, and develops an imperceptible wobble. Most casinos guard against this and re-bias their wheels frequently, to guard against clever and unprincipled gamblers who watch and observe and take careful note of which parts of the rim it favours, when the ball comes to rest. But in a place like Sto Kerrig, where people spend afternoons in the kaffeehuis smoking strong tobaccos for recreation, these are the little details that get lost, or which you reassure yourself may wait till tomorrow. So as not to arouse suspicion that I was merely watching for such a pattern of bias and waiting to seek to break the bank, I took care to place small and insignificant side bets, some which won, and one or two which lost. And when the time was right to seek bigger stakes for bigger wins, I did so to the best of my ability. And to assist you in recouping your debt to my friend."

Balthazar nodded, dumbly. He was glad they were only playing demonstration rounds of various card games for small coins, just to teach a few things. This woman would be _lethal_ playing for real.

One of the other passengers in the coach suggested a game for real money. Emmanuelle looked gravely at him, then turned back her lapel to reveal her Gamblers Guild badge.

"I have no objection, but as a Guild member I would be forced to play _à l'outrance_." She said. "Guild membership requires nothing less. Now do you still wish to play for "real money", _mon ami_? No? As you wish. Many Guild members would not have revealed themselves. You are fortunate today! You may, however, observe the lessons I am teaching."

And then, after three nights of separate rooms, and Emmanuelle warning Balthazar that should he dare try to enter her chamber it would strain their friendship, they were on the harbourside at Brindisi. Emmanuelle had gone off to talk to the Captain and the Ship's Purser, having first seen him into the comfort of a well appointed stateroom. As he was relishing the comfort and glad this was by no means a pig-boat, she returned.

"Madame, you are holding monies in custody for me?" he asked, politely.

"No longer." she said, shrugging. "Speak to the Purser**(1)**. I have lodged a large sum of money with him sufficient to your needs while aboard ship. This will be a six-week voyage, after all. To guard against you getting into a card game with wily _matelots _and losing it all in one mad night, the Purser is under strict instructions to pay you a weekly wage of no more than a hundred dollars per week. Now that is over twenty times the average wage of a worker in Ankh-Morpork, _mon brave_. It will be ample for you! This will be strictly accounted for and the balance paid into your hand on arrival. This is a letter from the Embassy confirming that the balance of money you won in the casino has been credited to the _Staadtsbank _in Piemburg and paid into the keeping of your brother and his wife, Andreas and Agnetha Smith-Rhodes. They will keep it for you and disburse it as they see fit. That is a guarantee that you will arrive home to their keeping and supervision, _mon ami._ Ambassador van der Graaf insisted on that!"

And then, to his surprise, she hugged and kissed him.

"You were more enjoyable than I thought, mon ami!" she said. "Helas, were you twenty years younger…"

"Or you thirty years older!" he said, gallantly. "So this is _au revoir?"_

She looked gravely at him.

"Non, Balthazar. Assuredly _not_. But one day I might wish to visit Rimwards Howondaland, for pleasure if not business."

Leaving, she added, "Write to Johanna. She will want to know how you get on."

She watched the ship leave. It was the final detail in the contract, anyway.

_Perhaps clacks the Guild to confirm contract completion. Then a day or two here. Then back to Ankh-Morpork on the fast coach. Or, as I feel I have earned it, Klatchian Carpetways operates a passenger carpet service from the Klatchian embassy here. That will be fun. I have never flown before. _

She had a delicious vision of enticing a handsome Klatchian pilot and inaugurating something called the… _Third of a League-High-Club? _That might not be a first, it must have been done before, but on a public passenger carpet?

She smiled. Brindisian men could be charming and attentive lovers, and every holiday needed a touch of romance…

* * *

Balthazar Smith-Rhodes watched the Brindisian coast, and a lifetime of working on the Central Continent, disappear. _Maybe it is for the best. At least it will be warm. But ag, I never got to see the Balgrog. I would prefer it, to Barbarossa in one of his moods._

Then the thought of rounding Cape Fear gripped him. He winced. But that was a month away. There was dinner to come tonight. And a couple of older single women of about his own age were aboard. Kiff.

* * *

_A week later. _

Emmanuelle walked into the Raven House office and exchanged kisses with Johanna.

"Joan's a bit ennoyed with you." Johanna said, without preamble. "That postcerd you sent her, from Sto Kerrig? She opened her morning mail in front of her essembly cless, and of course they got to see the picture on the beck before she did!"

"_Quel dommage!"_ said Emmanuelle, softly, as she unfastened the money belt she wore. She started counting notes out, high denomination dollar bills. After a while the notes themselves took up the count.**(2)**

"Contract completed."she said, as the last of the recovered money piled up on the desk. "Your rogue uncle is alive and well, although I fear your father will have strong words with him when he arrives."

"I suppose I'd better pay you off, then." Johanna sighed. She passed over two fifty pence coins.

"Total contract fee: one dollar. Fifty pence to you end fifty per cent Guild Tax to Mr Wimvoe so he can balance his books, he frets otherwise!"

They had concluded the lowest possible contract fee for the job. It had raised eyebrows, but a deal between two Guild members is an inviolable contract in itself.

"Emmie, strictly speaking, you _are_ entitled to twenty percent of monies recovered es a bonus!" Johanna reminded her. Emmanuelle shook her head.

"No need, _cherie_. I did it for a friend, and besides, I had a few good nights in the casinos. The money is all yours! And did Alice and Vinnie get their postcards?"

"I heard Miss Maccalariat from the Post Office clomped round end complained directly to Lord Downey about _filth _end _depravity_ being sent to the Guild via her Post Office. End Young Meroon, the post-boy, hed to go end hev a cold shower!"

Johanna looked disapproving for a fraction of a second. Then she said "Welcome home, Emmie!"

"Thank you" Emmanelle said. Then she added, out of mischief, "_Poupette_."

* * *

_The very last word_

In a cavern deep in the heart of the Disc, He awoke from the sleep of eight thousand years, the first awakening since the great wizard and those bloody Heroes had locked him in this cavern during the climactic battle of the Dark War.

As His fell senses returned, He sensed rather than heard the clang of picks and the scrape of tools deep in the earth. He roared a soundless scream of anger and reached for His whip and sword. Sitting up in His prison cell of ages. The whip whoomphed into red flame.

_Sodding bloody dwarves, waking me up at this time of aeon! I don't know, just as you drop off to sleep the little bastards come prospecting near you and you'll never be able to get some eyes-down for at least a thousand years! _

He wanted to go on the rampage and stomp and stir-fry a few Dwarfs… no, what would be really elegant would be for them to break down the walls of His cell, all by their little selves, and then He'd finessed that sodding spell, as it could be said _others _had freed _Him…_.

He suddenly felt weary and sleepy. He switched his whip off to conserve the _oomph,_ and laid down to sleep again.

_OK, maybe in a couple of millenia's time, then…_

He paused and sniffed the psychic air.

_Funny, there was a little prompt there, something about the last Balgrog-Hunter having left the continent.. ah well, bear it in mind for when I finally get up. _

And Smothgog, last Balgrog to trouble the Disc, rolled over and went back to sleep in his prison of millennia.

Four miles up and a hundred Turnwise, the Dwarfs continued tunnelling in their search for gold and silver and element 117…

* * *

**(1) **The Purser is the ship's officer who deals with its monies and finance. And yes, the word is related to "Bursar".

**(2) In Making Money, **Teemer and Spools, printers, propose building in thamatological safeguards against theft and forgery, including talking notes…


	11. The very last word  for now

_**The Black Sheep: **_

_**Die Laaste Woord (vir nou)**_

_**The last word (for now)**_

_Later in the year. Early summer. Howondaland. _

Under the unforgiving Howondalandian sun, Balthazar Smith-Rhodes took a deep and glad draught of water. While the afternoon was fading into evening, it was still hot enough to be uncomfortable to one who had only recently returned from Abroad and who was still reacclimatising.

The reunion with his brother had been prickly, to say the least. Andreas, the red-bearded Barbarossa, was a big man who carried no spare weight after a lifetime of farming the veldt and making it work. A punch from him _hurt,_ it always bleddy well _had_, ever since they had been boys together. But Agnetha, sweet kindly-hearted and gentle Agnetha, had prevented serious bloodshed and had kept the peace.

"So you saw Johanna. How is she? Did you meet her young man? Is he reliable? Is he committed to her?" The barrage of questions had left him slightly siege-weapon-shocked: he blessed the Quirmian woman, who had not only given him a life back, she had anticipated Johanna's mother would ask such questions, and on the trip to Brindisi, she had primed him with the answers.

"_Gut!"_ Barbarossa had proclaimed. "My daughters are _gold_ to me and I would not tolerate just any man who believes he is good enough for one. I have _seen_ the wizards down at Witwatersrand University, at their college of magic, and it surprises me Johanna should be taken with one such. But if, as you say, he is rising in their ranks and one day may be Chief Wizard, then this suggests he has more going for him than most."

Balthazar had a vision of the scholarly and bespectacled Ponder Stibbons meeting his formidable father-in-law for the first time, and smiled a little smile. He had nothing against Ponder, who he believed to be a decent young man, but he wanted to be around when such a meeting of opposites took place. He wouldn't miss it for a caseful of gold _Burgerrand. _

_Maybe not such a meeting of opposites. Stibbons deals with Mustrum Ridcully every day. He has experience in dealing with big bear-like men who shout and harrumph and whose minds run on rails. Does Andreas have experience in dealing with men like Ponder Stibbons? _

He leant back in the front of the wagon, a big clumsy _Boortrekkiesvagn _that the Smith-Rhodes family maintained for the tourists from the big city. It had been parked up for the night, and other members of the party were going about camp duties, erecting tents, tethering and feeding the draught oxen, setting a cooking fire, preparing the _poitjies_ and the mossie-nets to keep the _goggas_ at bay. Balthazar had evaded this by pulling in one of the guard duties, watching for lions and marauding hyenas, keeping his crossbow readied to fire a warning shot. It wasn't onerous work: they had also brought out a pack of lion-dogs who would act as security. They'd smell lion or hyena on the breeze before he could see them, and so far the dogs were quiet. At night they would be put on long tethers around the _laager _to deter predators from raiding.

One of the safari party came back to the wagon to refill a bucket with water. He smiled down on her, suddenly the kind uncle who had returned with exciting tales of the Central Continent. She had been born just after his last exile to Ankh-Morpork and he had met her for the first time on his latest return.

He smiled down at the pretty red-haired girl of eleven, the youngest and last child of his brother and sister in law. Mariella Smith-Rhodes was spending her last summer in Howondalaand before her personal exile began later in the year. She had volunteered for it, in fact: a couple of summers before, she had met her oldest sister Johanna for the first time, who was on a rare visit Home using up accumulated leave from the Guild. Something must have clicked between the two sisters: Mariella had pestered her parents for their permission to start the selection process that enabled a small number of chosen ones to attend the Assassins' Guild School in faraway Ankh-Morpork as Staadt-sponsored candidates. There was intense competition for those scholarships, but Mariella had persevered through all the tests and selections and made it into the last eight, beating eighty candidates from all over Rimwards Howondaland. Her name must have helped, as well as the undeniable fact there was a proven and close family connection to a graduate Assassin: the Guild valued that sort of thing.

"Hi, Uncle Baal!"

Balthazar smiled down, genuinely warmed. It occurred to him that he was being drawn effortlessly into all the small currencies of family, everything he had found narrow boring, dull and irksome thirty years before. But this time he liked it.

"When your chores are done, girlie, we can talk Ankh-Morpork some more, tonight! It's a dangerous place and bad things can happen. Although I grant you you'll be learning to be one of the most dangerous things in it, and you've got family there who'll look out for you!"

She smiled up. "Tell me more about the Shades, uncle. That's the most dangerous part of town, yesno?"

"Well, only if you don't know what you're doing and your face isn't known. In my experience, the most dangerous _district_ is Scoone Avenue and Kings Way, if only because the people who live there are rich and ruthless and if they do not like your face, you are dead! And the most dangerous _place _is up before Patrician Vetinari at Assizes after the Watch pins a charge on you. Oh, and we'll talk in Morporkian tonight. I know you're good at it, but there are all kinds of little things in that language that can trip you up. You know the thing about s_eamstresses_, for instance?"

Her face creased in a honest frown.

"Women who sew things up when they get torn?" she asked.

Uncle Baal smiled, wistfully.

"You very much need to know about seamstresses. I will try to tell you all these things before you leave in August. Now you have the dogs to water?"

She took the hint and moved off with the water-bucket, two of the massive loping dogs falling in alongside her. With her free hand, she petted one's ears and neck as its tongue lolled happily.

He watched her go, meeting the family employee who was effectively Master of the Dogs further down the track. He was lighter-skinned than most black servants and, incredibly, had a shock of thick red hair. The Smith-Rhodes treated him with a greater leniency than they did most of their blacks, but still tried to hide him away if they ever had visitors. Balthazar watched his son, his big strong son, with a smile on his face. The lion-dogs were taught from birth to be suspicious of black-skinned people and welcoming to whites. Being of mixed race and the subject of several BOSS investigations as to his parentage, Gottfried N'Betwa perplexed them and fused their signals, and took advantage of this to train them and control them.

_He does well, too. Then again, Barbarossa is more liberal than most to the blacks. He carries a sjaemboek, but nobody can remember the last time he took it to a black. He never let his men set the dogs on them for pleasure. He said he wants intelligent people working for him, people who know what needs to be done and can be relied upon to do it without somebody there to tell them, and not serfs and slaves. He financed a school to give their kids basic education. He pays them as well as he dares, given apartheid law. So the blacks queue up if he ever has a job vacancy. They're loyal to him because they know he's a good baas. He even trained them in weapon skills, informally, so as to have more manpower ready to fight if the Kwa'Zulu raid. And they fight for him because they know the Kwa'Zulu kill any blacks who work for the white man, to set an example to the rest. Unofficially, he acknowledges Gottfried, although it can only be unofficial. Man, that took some balls! And fair play, a black child with suspiciously red hair on __**this**__ farm needed careful and sensitive handling. When that boy marries, he will perhaps find his employer to be more generous than the situation calls for. Nobody talks about it, but everyone understands. And, ag, that boy's _**father**_ has a lot of strictly unofficial catching-up to do!_

His thoughts turned to the dozen or so city people, from places like Zambingo and Joburg and Pratoria and Bloemsfontein, all of whom had paid handsomely to rough it on up-country safari, with the added delicious frisson that the Kwa'Zulu might raid at any time with only a few hours' notice. (Several fast horsemen had accompanied the safari: if they made contact or discovered sign of Zulu intrusion, they were to ride off and raise the frontier farms and call out the citizens' militia, the _kommando_). He, Balthazar, was paid to look after them, deal with complaints diplomatically, talk them into doing their share of chores, and to give them the safari experience they were paying handsomely for. All the men had done national service and were, in their middle-aged way, happily revisiting the privations of early adulthood. The women needed more sensitive handling, but one had already hinted that more might be on offer, after dark, to her raffish safari guard with the engaging fireside tales of hunting fabled monsters in the other continent. Trolls did not live in Howondaland – it was too hot for them – and other creatures of dark imagining, banshees and werewolves and balgrogs, were just story-book tales the original Sto Kerrigian emigrants had brought with them. It was good territory for added tips at the end of the safari holiday.

No, Balthazar was a happy and contented man. It could all have turned out worse…

* * *

_September that year. _

The courtyard of the Assassins' Guild was full of the bustle of a new School term. Established students were busy registering with their Houses and making their way to their new dorms. Senior students had the privilege of tipping porters to carry their cases, and in some cases to look after their hunting dogs.

Clusters of overseas students had been arriving for several days now, depending on the shipping schedules, or in the case of Klatchians, on the commercial flying carpet timetables. Fourecksians had been first, alongside a couple of shy and scholarly-looking Agatean exchange pupils. The first Dwarfs to be offered Assassin training, following an agreement between Lord Vetinari and Low King Rhys, were in a huddled ethnic group of their own. They were largely the sons and daughters of assorted Kings Under The Mountain, which Lord Downey had insisted on to maintain _ton _and prevent complaints from the more snobbish noble families, who could scarcely complain about their sons and daughters rubbing shoulders (or at least waists) with royal Dwarfs. Even if they were a "_lesser race_" in the eyes of Rusts and Venturis.

Guild teaching staff, mainly the ill-paid and amorphous class known as teaching assistants, distinguished by purple teachers' sashes bearing a central white stripe to denote their lesser status, were patiently moving among the students, calling names and ticking people off clip-boarded lists. Groups of new students were being marshalled off all the time as they arrived.

The two groups of First Year students who hailed from Howondaland had arrived on separate ships, and were politely ignoring each other's presence, at least for now, despite the fact they were grouped relatively close to each other. It had not escaped the notice of both camps that senior students, some black, some white, were greeting each other as if they regarded each other as equals and friends. To the consternation of the Boors, they heard a familiar Rimwards Howondalandian accent grating out "_Hey, Mitzi, howzit going, skattie?" _and saw a White Howondalandian affectionately shoulder-hugging a black girl of the same age. She hugged back, looked at the new first year pupils, laughed and said "Take it easy_, lekker_, we're fusing their minds over there!"

"The new _goggas_? Ag, they'll learn!"

Mariella Smith-Rhodes was as shocked as the rest, but recalled Uncle Baal's patient teaching. _Apartheid does not exist there. You must adjust your attitudes. _So she said nothing, even when the opinionated Horst Lensen, who on the voyage over, she had marked down as a fool and an idiot, muttered something severely racially inflammatory. She sat on her sea-chest, which contained everything on the clothing and equipment list for first-years and which represented all she owned in the world, and watched. She frowned, thinking she had glimpsed her sister Johanna watching from a shadowed doorway at the far side of the quad. Although cloaked and cowled, her carriage and stance were unmistakeable. _Ag, I want to be like Johanna! I have wanted that since the older sister I had never met suddenly turned up at Home three summers ago and we spent time together! _

A teaching assistant approached them. She wore Assassin black and a sword which she carried with ease rested against her hip. As Horst said with malice, she was black of skin. All grown women look impossibly old when you're eleven; Mariella guessed the lithe and lissom black woman to be in her early twenties, like her married sister Agnetha.

"_She's here to collect the kaffirs. Do you think they'd let a kaffir teach white people?" _whispered Horst. Mariella wished he would blooming well shut up.

But to their consternation she came to them. She looked them over without speaking for a few moments. Mariella looked past her. Yes. No mistake. That _was_ Johanna standing there, watching. So this is a _test_, yesno? Of how we respond to a bleck teacher? Johanna said to me that every day at the Guild is a test, when you are learning, and sometimes you only realise afterwards that you have been tested. _Let us see if Horst has realised…_

"Welcome to the Guild school." the black woman said, with kindness in her voice. "You are the party from Rimwards Howondaland. I have your House assignations here…"

She paused, having heard a whisper and a snigger. Her sword leapt into her hand in a smooth, easy, and above all _quick_ move. The point of it was tickling Horst under the chin.

"Stand up, if you please." she requested. "I would like the name of the young man brave enough to use terms like "kaffir" and "house-girl"?"

Horst, hypnotised by two feet of black-enamelled steel, stammered his name. She nodded.

"Mr Horst Lensen. Do you hear me being discourteous to you and treating you with disrespect, Mr Lensen? No? Then let me introduce myself. My name is Ruth N'Kweze. I am no Bantu or Xhosa. I am Kwa'Zulu and a daughter of the Paramount. I can trace my family song back at least as long as any Boor can trace his ancestors to Sto Kerrig. You will call me Miss N'Kweze. You are indeed fortunate that in normal circumstances, I am strictly not allowed to draw blood from a student. Do not nod. On _this_ occasion, as we _both_ intend to have a long and happy life at this school, I will overlook your use of the word "kaffir".

She lowered and sheathed her sword with the same fluid grace.

"All of you will be aware that I will treat you absolutely fairly and without distinction or favour. Whatever our race or nationality when we begin, we are _all_ part of a higher calling and family here. The family of _Assassins!_ And in that family, all are equal!"

She softened, and added

"Ten years ago, I too sat in this yard at the age of eleven, feeling a long way away from home, and wondering what I was letting myself in for. I have not forgotten." Her smile was sympathetic. "Now we decide where you are to be sent. "

She consulted the clipboard.

"Horst Lensen. Pick up your chest and go over there to the doorway marked Cobra House. You are to report to your housemaster Mr Mericet. You will of course admit to him you were insubordinate and used offensive language to a member of the teaching staff, and you will accept his punishment without question. Go."

Humbled and chastened, Lensen shouldered his luggage and moved on.

She similarly sent the three other boys off - one more to Viper House and the other two to Cobra House, Mariella noted. Now it was the girls' turn.

"Deena van Leidermejer and Trudie Stijlen – Raven House. You are fortunate that I am the Assistant Housemistress and we will be seeing a lot of each other. Miss Smith-Rhodes, the Housemistress, will make herself known later. She also has a pastoral responsibility for all White Howondalandian pupils in School. She will gather you together and address you all later.

"Susannah Daniels. You are assigned to Scorpion House. Your housemistress is Lady T'Malia. And last of all, we come to…"

The black girl smiled down.

"Mariella Elisabet Smith-Rhodes. You are going to Black Widow House. Your housemistress is Madame Deux-Ēpées. She is fully aware of your close relationship to a member of the teaching staff. Follow me, and I will take you over there personally."

Ruth talked in a low voice as they crossed the courtyard. "I won't insult you by telling you that Johanna cannot show you any favours or preference at school just because you happen to be her sister. You're intelligent enough to have worked that out for yourself. The reason why we haven't assigned you to her House is that we know you're only human and she _will_ want time with you, as your sister and not as your teacher. If you were a pupil in her House, you would be her responsibility twenty-four hours and eight. Besides, the other pupils would see favour where there isn't any, and give you a hard time. We try to avoid that. You'll like Madame Deux-Ēpées, by the way. She'll work you hard, but she's pleasant and her sense of humour is a legend."

Mariella walked on. She was starting to get a feeling that she'd like it here. _Uncle Baal went home at the start of the spring. I arrive here at the start of the autumn. What goes around, comes around. But will I be another black sheep of the family? _

_

* * *

_

_You never know. If the idea takes me, I might pen another Mariella story at some point: the young student Assassin of whom big things are expected just because of who her sister is. _


End file.
